Dents and Bruises
by Lady Quickshift
Summary: Rescue Bots No one ever said being on a rescue team was easy, but they never say how hard it is either.
1. Chapter 1

Dents and Bruises

Talking:

"English or other Earth language"

"_**Cybertronian"**_

'_Thoughts'_

:Comm. Links:

(Bond talk)

**(_Bumblebee talking_)**

"_Recordings or telephone conversations"_

_Flashback or change of time or place_

Time changes:

Nano-klick=1/2 a klik. Klik= less than a second. Breem (cybertronian minute) = 8 minutes. Cycle=hour. Joor (Cybertronian hour) = 6 hours. Solar cycle=day. Megacycle= 1 week. Orn= 13 days. Groon= 1 month. Deca-orn = 3 months. Stellar cycle= 1 year. Vorn=83 years.

Rated T for good reasons, the ones in this chapter being language, mentions of slash, talks about sensitive topics and anything else I might have missed.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except my OC's or any original ideas I patched in to fill in any blanks left by the show. If you recognize it from somewhere else it's probably not mine.

* * *

Cody Burns rode down the streets of Griffin Rock as fast as his hover board could go. He was late for school because his family was the Rescue Team and he had been helping with an emergency but everyone else was still finishing up at the scene so he was on his own getting to school.

"Come on, come on," He didn't slow down until he got to the school and had to fold up his hover board and fast-walked to his classroom; he was already late he didn't want to get into trouble for running in the halls too.

He walked into his classroom just as the bell rang and went to sit next to Frankie, who leaned closer to him to whisper "Cutting it a bit close, aren't you?"

Cody whispered back. "I know, but there was an emergency and I was helping out in the command center but it took longer than I thought it would,"

Frankie snorted with amusement. "You're just lucky Mr. Robbins isn't here yet,"

Just then said teacher, a middle aged man with thinning gray hair and a pot belly wearing a brown suit, came into the classroom.

Cody looked up and noticed a girl standing next to Mr. Robbins, she about his and Frankie's age with dark hair that went down to her shoulders and was wearing a dark blue vest over a black turtleneck with blue jeans and cowboy boots.

He realized he never seen her before and leaned closer to Frankie. "Who's she? I don't think I've seen her before"

Frankie looked "I don't know,"

Mr. Robbins stood at the front of the classroom to address the class. "Settle down children, settle down," he waited until the kids sat down and listened. "I would like to announce we are getting a new classmate today. Say hello to Sasha everyone,"

The girl turned to look at the class but no one greeted her, instead they all started whispering amongst themselves so Mr. Robbins told her to go sit at the empty desk that just so happened to be on the other side of Cody.

Cody leaned closer to the girl and whispered. "Hi, I'm Cody,"

Sasha looked at him and whispered "H-hi,"

Her nervousness and hazel eyes somehow reminded Cody of Blades but he didn't have time to dwell on it as she quickly looked down at her backpack and took out a wire bound notebook and a pencil to start taking notes on what Mr. Robbins was talking about.

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At lunch, Cody and Frankie sat at their usual spot in the lunch room with their lunches and sat down to eat.

Cody was about to bite into his sandwich when he saw someone out of the corner of his eye and looked to see Sasha look around at the tables before going to sit at an empty one.

Frankie saw he was looking at something and turned around to look. "Why is she sitting at the gross table?"

Cody frowned, the reason that table was empty is because it was by the garbage cans and not only was the smell unpleasant but sometimes kids threw their leftovers at the trash cans and when they missed it splattered on the table, hence the nickname "The gross table"

At the table next to theirs, a group of boys also noticed the new girl was alone and decided to have a little fun with her.

One of the boys, an eighth grader wearing and orange shirt, brown stocking cap and ripped jeans, grabbed his milk carton and said "Hey, watch this," He threw the opened carton at the table Sasha was sitting at and the girl yelped as milk splattered everywhere.

The boys at the other table laughed while Sasha carefully picked apart her now soaked lunch and, after a moment of consideration, took a reluctant bite out of her sandwich.

A few girls in their class screamed. "Eww,"

"The new girl ate her sandwich after Joey dumped milk on it!"

Cody saw the girl was trying to ignore them in favor of eating her lunch and that the boys at Joey's table were preparing to throw more stuff at her.

This made him angry, he didn't like it when his older siblings picked on him even though they were just teasing him but these guys were actually trying to be mean to the new girl.

Cody got up from his seat and went over to her and held out his hand. "Hey, want to come sit with us?"

Sasha looked up at him and considered for a moment but gasped when Cody was hit in the back of the head by a wad of mashed potatoes.

"Hey!" He turned around and saw the bullies were snickering while Joey, who seemed to be the ring leader, grinned like he just won a contest.

Cody wiped the worst of the goop from his hair. "Knock it off, you guys,"

Joey sneered at him. "What are you going to do? Send your family's giant robots after us?"

Frankie appeared next to Cody and put her hands on her hips. "What if he does?"

Cody realized she had almost revealed the Rescue Bots' secret and tried to pull her away. Frankie wouldn't move until someone grabbed her other arm and started to pull her back to their table.

They looked to see who it was and saw that Sasha had gathered her lunch and was coming to sit with them.

They all sat down and started to eat. After a few moments, Frankie and Cody heard a quiet "Thank you," and looked at Sasha, who was looking down at her lunch before she pulled her sandwich out of the bag and started eating it again.

Cody smiled at her and said "You're welcome. So where are you from, Sasha?"

Sasha hesitated before telling him. "I used to live in on a farm in Kentucky close to Lexington, but then I had to move here,"

Frankie's interest piqued. "Kentucky? Isn't that where a lot of horse racing happens?"

Sasha nodded. "Yeah, we raised and trained horses for the track and for life off the track when they retired,"

"Cool," Frankie wrinkled her nose at the other girl's now soggy lunch. "Are you actually going to eat that?"

Sasha shrugged and said "I don't like to waste," she took a bite, grimacing at the taste and texture as she choked down the rest of her sandwich and pulled an apple out of the bag.

Cody looked at what the girl had for her lunch; in addition to the sandwich she had an apple, some carrot sticks and a reusable water bottle. "At least the sandwich was the only think that could be ruined by the milk.

Sasha just nodded and started to take a bite of her apple before asking them. "What about you? What's it like in Griffin Rock?"

And so the two told the girl all about Griffin Rock and its inhabitants, as well as all of their little adventures with the Rescue Bots—leaving out the part about the truth about the Rescue Bots, of course—until lunch was over and they had to go back to class.

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Eventually, school got out and all of the students were free to go.

Cody and Frankie got out at the same time and were eager to enjoy their newfound freedom to the fullest by going to the firehouse to test one of Doc. Greene's new inventions that said scientist should be dropping off by the time they get there.

"Hey, Frankie, I'll race you,"

Frankie grinned and the two of them got into starting positions. "On your mark, get set…"

They took off running, bantering back and forth as they ran until they came to the park but stopped when they heard someone screaming.

Looking around, they saw Mrs. Neederlander standing beneath a tree in a near panic. The two kids jogged over to her and Cody asked. "Mrs. Neederlander, what's wrong?"

The elderly woman cried out again as she looked up at her long haired white cat, Mr. Pettypaws. "Oh, my poor baby is stuck in a tree again," she gave Cody a sharp look as though the whole situation was his fault. "Where is that family of yours, young man? They should have been here by now?"

Cody flinched and put on a forced smile. "Don't worry. I'm sure they'll be here any minute,"

He looked around and listened for sirens, any sign of Heatwave and Kade or Chase and his dad.

Suddenly Frankie was pulling on his sleeve. "Cody, look,"

Cody looked up and saw someone climbing up the tree Mr. Pettypaws was stuck in. Taking a few steps back, he could see it was Sasha. "Sasha, get down from there,"

Sasha just kept climbing, whispering reassurances to the cat as she made her way up to it. "Come here kitty, it's alright. I'm going to get you down from here, alright?"

She made it to the branch Mr. Pettypaws was on just as Kade and Chief Burns got there with Heatwave and Chase.

Mrs. Neederlander marched right up to them with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. "About time you got here. You took so long a little girl is doing a better job at saving my baby than you have,"

Just then, Sasha lost her footing and slipped off the branch and was hanging by one arm with Mr. Pettypaws in the other.

Mrs. Neederlander screamed about how "her baby" was in trouble and everyone looked up to see what had happened and Kade looked up at Heatwave. "Heatwave go!"

Heatwave sprang into action. "On it,"

While Chase kept the crowd that was gathering back, Heatwave stood beneath the tree but to his surprise the girl flinched away from him and tried to climb down on her own.

Heatwave was confused by this and was about to snap at her to let him do his job but remembered to do so in a robotic monotone. "Human: release hold on tree,"

The girl stopped struggling for a moment and looked around before looking down at his servos as though trying to gauge how far down it was only to discover his servos were cupped directly beneath her to catch her and the cat.

So she lowered herself until she felt her feet touch his servos and dropped down into the bots servos where she held the now squirming cat to her chest to her chest, despite that fact it was digging its claws into her vest as it rubbed against her.

Once Heatwave lowered his servos to the ground Mrs. Neederlander came up and grabbed her cat to "comfort" him after his ordeal and scowled up at the bots and their "handlers". "You're just lucky my poor Pettypaws wasn't hurt!"

She walked away with her cat and Heatwave scowled after her. "_**You're welcome," **_He looked down at the girl who sat up in his servos, looking up at him.

Deciding to break the stare down he asked. "Are you injured, human?"

The girl seemed to realize she was staring and climbed off his hand. "I'm fine… Um, thank you?"

Cody and Frankie came up to make sure their new friend was alright. "You ok, Sasha?"

Sasha gave them a smile and nodded but then she looked back up at Heatwave but then froze when she saw Chief Burns standing next to Cody. "Who's your friend, son?"

Cody looked up at his dad. "Dad, this is Sasha. She's new here,"

Chief Burns smiled at the girl. "Nice to meet you Sasha,"

Sasha looked at him nervously, then she saw Chase walking up to them and started to back away. "Um… I-I'd better go,"

She grabbed her back pack from where she had left it at the base of the tree and ran away from them, disappearing as she went around the corner at the end of the street.

Heatwave stood up. "What's with her?"

Chief Burns looked at him. "She's probably just nervous about being around bots. You guys do take a little getting used to. Come on, let's go. Need a ride home, Frankie?"

Frankie nodded "Actually, me and Cody were on our way to the firehouse anyway,"

While Frankie and his dad got into Chase's alt. mode, Cody looked down the direction Sasha had gone.

Something was off about the girl; when she looked at Heatwave she had a look of wonder but not the kind that came with seeing a bot for the first time but more like she knew him from somewhere but couldn't figure out where.

"Hey, Cody, are you coming?"

Cody snapped out of his thoughts and went to get into the backseat of Chase's alt. mode with Frankie. "Coming,"

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When they got back to the firehouse and Chief Burns and the kids got out of Chase's alt. mode, Blades ran up to them in a state of mild panic. "Nobody go upstairs, I think Dani's in berserker mode!"

Chief Burns held up his hands "Calm down, Blades. Now what happened with Dani?"

Blades forced himself to act calmer than he actually was as he explained.

"Well, when we were on patrol earlier she seemed to be in a bad mood but when I asked her what was wrong she said…"

He blushed. "Well, I can't repeat what she said exactly but she basically told me to mind my own business. When we got back she stomped upstairs like we just had a fight. Did I do something wrong?"

Kade climbed out of Heatwave's alt. mode and pulled off his helmet. "Sounds like it's that time of the month again, good luck putting up with her for the next week,"

He left and Blades was immediately worried for his human partner. "What happens at 'that time of the month'? Is it bad?"

Chief Burns looked uncomfortable and started to say something but Frankie beat him to the punch. "Come on, guys don't really like to talk about this stuff so I'll explain it," she waved for Blades to follow her outside.

Graham and Boulder walked in then and had overheard their conversation. "Uh, Frankie, how would you know about that?"

The girl rolled her eyes. "They just gave us 'the Talk' in school the other day. You guys need me to explain it to you too?" she looked up at the other Rescue bots.

Always wanting to learn something new, Boulder nodded and followed. "Alright,"

Heatwave crossed his arms and snorted, about to refuse, but then he noticed Frankie was giving him "doe-eyes" and relented.

Chase also followed them outside when Boulder reminded them they were supposed to be finding out more about humans.

Once they were gone, Chief Burns looked down at Cody. "Just how much did they tell you when they talked to you kids about this stuff at school?" He wanted to know so he would know how much he would have to tell Cody about when he was old enough.

Cody shrugged. "They made the boys and girls go into separate rooms and told the girls about all the girl stuff but they didn't tell us much, just the stuff they thought we would need to know by now,"

Chief Burns sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose and put a hand on Cody's shoulder as they went to the elevator that went upstairs where the Burnses lived. "Come on, son, sounds like we need to have a little talk too,"

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By the time Frankie had finished explaining everything to the bots, she had a wicked smile on her face, enjoying the thought of making the giant alien robots squirm a bit.

To her surprise, almost, the only one that actually squirmed was Blades.

When she finished, Frankie looked up at the Bots. "So, what do you guys think?"

Boulder tapped his chin in thought. "Actually, now that I think about it this sort of cycle sounds almost like Cybertronian heat cycles,"

Chase nodded. "Boulder is correct, although Cybertronian heat cycles do not happen nearly as often and instead of increased interface drive it would appear human females bleed out of…"

Frankie looked up at the bots. "Wait, Cybertronian girls do… _that_ too?"

Blades blushed and wanted to be anywhere but there but since he started this and he was the team's medic it fell upon him to explain things from a Cybertronian perspective. "Actually, mechs have heat cycles too…"

Frankie's eyes widened. "Wait, you guys get _periods?"_

Heatwave grumbled. "I don't see how that's any of your damn business,"

Blades heard what Heatwave said. "Hey, that's what Dani said earlier…" he gave the Fire Rescue mech a double-take and leaned away from him. "_**Oh Primus,"**_

Boulder whispered to Chase "_**Why do I get the feeling those two are going to be wanting more 'alone time' here in the near future?"**_

Chase considered the odds of that actually happening; since there wasn't much space to be spared to give the bot's personal quarters they ended up sharing with two bots per room and while Boulder usually roomed with Blades and Heatwave and Chase shared the other one it was no secret between them that Blades and Heatwave were together, mostly because Blades often ended up snuggled against their leader in his berth.

Chase leaned closer to Boulder to whisper. "_**If you want to temporarily switch roommates, should that happen, I will have no arguments.**_

Blades ignored them and looked down at Frankie. "Is there any way to help Dani when she has this? Or better yet a way to stop it?"

Frankie shrugged and said. "Sorry Blades, I don't think there is a way to stop it once it starts,"

Just then, Graham showed up and said. "Uh, Frankie, your dad is here. He says he had something for the bots but he won't tell me what it is. Any idea what he's talking about?"

Frankie smiled. "Oh yeah, I almost forgot," she ran past Graham and turned back to the bots. "Come on, you guys are gonna love this!"

They all looked at each other as the girl ran around the corner of the fire house and over to her father's car where he was lifting boxes out of the back seat.

Boulder followed her over, curious to see what Doc Greene had, and Graham looked up at the Bots "So, uh, what was that all about just now?"

Blades blurted out "Dani's on her cycle and we were wondering how to help her,"

Heatwave looked at him. "'We'? What's with the 'we'? _You_'re the one that brought it up,"

Graham scratched his head under his helmet. "I don't know much about his kind of thing, being as I'm a guy, but I heard sweets help, especially chocolate. One time when this happened Kade made her so mad she pushed him down some stairs and wouldn't even look at him but she calmed down when he gave her a bowl of ice cream as a peace offering,"

Heatwave raised an optic ridge at Graham. "Wait, she pushed him down stairs and he was nice to her?" He thought for a moment. "Note to self: push Kade down stairs,"

"Heatwave!" Graham, Chase and Blades all admonished him.

He held up his servos. "Kidding!" he walked over to where Frankie and Boulder were waiting with Doc Greene. "But I'll probably keep that option open,"

They went over to where Doc Greene had stacked four large boxes and smiled up at them. "Ah hello, everyone. How are you all on this fine day?"

The others all returned with their own greetings and Chase said "Did you need to speak with the Chief, Doctor?"

The scientist nodded "Actually I wanted to talk to the whole team about this, the chief included. Is everyone here or should we wait?"

"I'll go get them," Graham volunteered and went inside to find the rest of his family while the bots each took a box and carried it in with them since they would each be receiving whatever was in the boxes.

Blades gave the one he was holding an experimental shake. "I wonder what's in these,"

Doc Greene saw what he was doing and held up his hands to get him to stop. "Please be careful with those. I'll explain everything once everyone is here,"

A few minutes after everyone was gathered in the garage Graham came back with Cody, Chief Burns and Kade. "I asked Dani to come down to but she just groaned and said she'll be right out like she did when we had to get her up for school,"

Kade rolled his eyes. "And every time she did that we had to get her up again," he looked at Graham and said abruptly. "You go get her,"

Graham gawked at him. "Me? I got everyone else, you go get her,"

Chief Burns held up his hand. "Enough, if she actually needs to be down here for this I'll go get her. If not then we can always fill her in later," he looked at Doc Greene. "Now, what's this all about, Doc?"

Doc Greene clasped his hands together. "Well, Chief Burns, ever since I have found out the truth about your Rescue Bot team I have been collaborating with the Autobot's medic, Ratchet, on a new project,"

They knew all about the Autobot medic but they didn't know that Doc Greene had been working on something with him and given their resident scientist's past record they were cautious.

"And what might this project be?" Chief Burns crossed his arms.

"I'll show you. If one of you would please…" he gestured for one of the bots to open their box and Boulder set his down to do just that so that the humans could see what was inside as well.

They all looked inside and found the box contained some sort of mechanical part with cords, cables and a thin tube coiled around it.

Cody was the one to ask the question that was on everyone's minds. "Um, what is it?"

Boulder looked at it. "It looks almost like a hologram projector,"

Doc Greene held up a finger. "Correction, a _holoform_ projector. See, when I spoke with Optimus Prime when Chief called them to help you all return from the past he mentioned that part of the Rescue Bots' mission was to learn more about humans and I wondered how I could help with that.

"When I spoke with Ratchet he mentioned that a member of their team was a motorcycle who used a solid light hologram when a human rider was unavailable. I told him we had the means to build interactive holograms…"

Cody looked at him. "Like the one of Chester A. Arthur in the Hall of Inspiration?"

Doc Greene nodded "Correct. Since then we had been corresponding and collaborating our work to build these holoform projectors so that the Rescue bots can have solid-light hologram avatars that can interact with their surroundings much like a human can,"

Cody looked at the projector. "Noble,"

Chase looked at Doc Greene as the other Rescue Bots opened their boxes to find they also had projectors like the one Boulder had just unwrapped. "Just out of curiosity, just what will we be able to do with these?"

Doc Greene looked up at Chase. "Like I said, in theory they should allow you to interact with humans on a human level but you will also be able to change your avatars to resemble your human partners should they be unavailable when you need to appear as though you have a human handler but you can also make them look like a regular human,"

Graham leaned closer to the piece of technology that would probably be installed into his robotic partner. "This might actually come in handy,"

Boulder looked down at Doc Greene. "When can we start?"

Doc Greene smiled "Whenever you're ready,"

They all went into the Bot's med. bay, which was just a closed off section of the bunker where they had moved all of the equipment they had salvaged from their ship, so they could use their medical equipment to install the projectors.

Doc Greene looked up at the bots once they got all of their equipment set up. "Alright, who's first?"

None of the bots could decide who would go first so they handled it the way they did when Cody wanted everyone to spend time together when the other Burnses found out about them; they pushed Blades to the front of the group so he would go first.

The Copterbot looked around and realized what just happened. "Ugh, _again?" _

Doc Greene just waved him over to the med. berth and he laid down on it. "Don't worry, Blades, this isn't really the first time I've done this. My last trip to the mainland was actually to help Ratchet install the original prototype into the Autobot I mentioned before. Just relax and it will be over before you know it,"

"I'll help," Boulder lifted Doc Greene onto the berth and moved to stand next to it.

"Thank you Boulder. Now then, let's get started, shall we?"

Everyone else left and Blades opened his chest plates so they could install the projector.

Boulder hooked him up to a monitor and reassured him. "Don't worry, Blades, everything's going to be ok,"

Blades tried to calm down. '_Boulder's right, I mean, what's the worst that could happen?"_

But then Boulder said. "No, Doc, don't touch that!" and Blades felt a jolt and everything went dark.

* * *

_**A.N. : So, what do you think? Good so far or should I just derail this crazy train before it goes too far? **_

_**Anyone catch any references? **_

_**Comments, suggestions and predictions are welcome. Any flames will be dealt with by Heatwave.**_


	2. Chapter 2

Dents and Bruises

Talking:

"English or other Earth language"

"_**Cybertronian"**_

'_Thoughts'_

:Comm. Links:

(Bond talk)

"_Recordings or telephone conversations"_

_Flashback or change of time or place_

Time changes:

Nano-klick=1/2 a klik. Klik= less than a second. Breem (cybertronian minute) = 8 minutes. Cycle=hour. Joor (Cybertronian hour) = 6 hours. Solar cycle=day. Megacycle= 1 week. Orn= 13 days. Groon= 1 month. Deca-orn = 3 months. Stellar cycle= 1 year. Vorn=83 years.

Rated T for good reasons, the ones in this chapter being language, slash, mentions of slash, talks about sensitive topics and anything else I might have missed.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except my OC's or any original ideas I patched in to fill in any blanks left by the show. If you recognize it from somewhere else it's probably not mine.

* * *

_He raced through the streets of Tyger Pax at top speed, everything around him a blur as he careened around dangerously sharp turns. He winced internally as the anti-grav panels of his alt. mode slammed back onto the metallic street after being lifted off the ground from the inertia._

'Whoa, that was close,'

_The copper-colored racer sped through traffic until he heard a siren behind him and a now-familiar voice yelling at him over an intercom. "__**Pull over to the side of the road or we will have no choice but to use force,"**_

_The Speedster, formerly known to his racing buddies as "Cutting Edge", wasn't worried; he was one of the best racers in the district circuit and he had these streets memorized, if he could race on the track why couldn't he race there?_

_The answer literally hit in in the form of a solid titanium wall as he swerved to avoid hitting a Youngling that ran out into the street after a ball that had rolled away from him._

Blades woke up from the dream, which wasn't an actual dream but a memory purge, as his systems were slowly starting to reboot.

As his systems finished rebooting, he could hear voices talking. Wanting to hear what they were saying and knowing they would change the subject if he woke up, Blades pretended to still be in stasis.

He tried not smile at his decision when he heard Frankie joke. "Maybe he needs to be kissed awake like Sleeping Beauty,"

Kade, not seeing why Frankie would make such a comment, went along with it. "Yeah, too bad Dani's not here to wake her partner up,"

To everyone's surprise, Heatwave went over to the berth Blades was on and leaned over him to kiss him on the lip components.

To the fire truck's surprise, Blades pulled him closer and kissed back.

Heatwave pulled back and realized what just happened. "You little faker, wake up," Heatwave shook Blades until the mech's optic shutters opened.

Blades looked around and groaned sat up. "What just happened?"

Kade made a look of disgust. "You passed out while the Doc was working on you and woke up in the middle of a make out session with Heatwave,"

Heatwave glared down at his human partner. "So it's ok for you to make out with Hailey in the cab of my alt. mode but I can't kiss the bot I'm seeing?" he crossed his arm-servos and looked away. "Frag you,"

Everyone looked up at Heatwave and Blades, the latter one blushed at the sudden admission, and Kade asked "Whoa, wait, you and Blades…"

Kade pointed at Graham. "HA! Told you Blades was actually a chick!"

Blades huffed "I am NOT!"

Chief Burns held up his hands to silence everyone. "Calm down everyone," he looked up at Blades and Heatwave. "Just out of curiosity, how long have you two been together?"

Blades blushed and Heatwave glanced at the Copterbot. "A while,"

Cody piped up "Right around the time Dani first hooked up the scoop claw to Blades,"

Everyone looked at him. "How would you know that Cody?"

Cody shrugged. "Just a guess, sometimes I hear you guys sneak out at night. You guys really aren't that sneaky,"

Frankie threw her hands up. "That's what I've been saying!"

Doc Greene cleared his throat, feeling like the others had forgotten he was there and wanting to get back on topic. "Now then, Blades, before we install the remaining three projectors into your teammates I would like to see how well yours integrated with your systems,"

Boulder made an encouraging gesture. "Go on Blades, give it a try,"

Blades closed his optic shutters and ran a systems' check and found a new set of subroutines had been added to his coding and a new bio-mechanism had been connected to his processors, Spark chamber and T-cog via various tubes and wires.

Curious, he ran the new subroutines and heard everyone gasp in surprise when a smaller version of Blades suddenly materialized in front of him.

Blades' holoform opened his optics and looked at himself. "Huh, what?" Blades looked at his arm-servo and flexed it. "Hey, I'm still me… a mini-me!"

Doc Greene looked over the holoform like a regular doctor giving a patient a physical. "I set the projectors to project smaller versions of your robotic forms so you are more familiar with them. You can change them as you see fit once you are more accustomed to it,"

Blades lifted his other arm-servo while Doc Greene checked over the one he had held up before; everything felt the same just lighter and smaller. "Cool,"

He looked at Boulder and Doc Greene. "Wait, right before I blacked out before I heard Boulder say 'No, Doc, don't touch that' and I got this huge shock and then… nothing. What happened?"

Boulder calmly explained. "When Doc Greene leaned in for a closer look at your internals he had his hand on one of your energon lines. If he had pulled that loose not only would you have bled out but the Doc would have gotten energon all over him,"

Blades shuddered. "Yeah, that would have been bad,"

Frankie looked up at them. "What's energon and what happens if humans get energon on them?"

Chase told them. "Energon is the life blood of our race; we fuel ourselves with it and it runs through our systems much like blood flows through human veins. Although while it keeps us alive, it is hazardous when it comes into contact with organic flesh,"

Doc Greene face palmed and shook his head. "Radiation poisoning and chemical burns that permeate the flesh right down to the bone. Ratchet told me about it but I didn't realize that was what I was holding. I am truly sorry, Blades,"

Blades smiled and shrugged "Well, now you know and knowing's half the battle,"

Heatwave grumped "_**It would have been nice if he knew that **__before__** he decided to work on us…"**_

Blades turned off his holoform and got up off the med. berth to let the next Rescue Bot get their projector installed. "Ok, who's next?"

Boulder, Heatwave and Chase looked at each other before the latter gestured towards the med. berth. "After you,"

Boulder held up his servos. "Actually, maybe I should help Doc with another one so he can get a better hang of this…"

Heatwave put his servos on his hips. "As team leader it is my responsibility to see to the wellbeing of my team before my own so…"

Blades cut in hesitantly "Heatwave, remember what happened last time you pulled rank on us?"

He gave them all a moment to think of the time Heatwave went against Chief's warning to not follow them up to Griffin Crest and what a disaster that was. Blades' tone became sharper and more exasperated when he added. "Bad things always happen when you try to pull rank on us like that!"

While the arguing continued amongst his team mates, Blades remembered something and leaned down to talk to Cody in a low voice. "Um, Cody, think you could help me with something?"

Cody looked up at the helicopter Rescue Bot. "What is it, Blades?"

Blades leaned down and whispered into Cody's ear and the boy smiled. "Come on, it's upstairs so you might want to use your new holoform for this,"

Blades transformed into his alt. mode and his holoform appeared and followed Cody to the lift that went to the upper level of the fire house.

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A few minutes later found Cody, Blades' holoform and Kade—who got bored down in the bunker and came upstairs—in the Burns' kitchen where Cody showed Blades where the bowls and the ice cream scoop was.

Blades looked at the scoop and started fiddling with it. "What's this thing here?"

Cody looked and saw he was referring to the small lever that worked the scraper that cleaned out the scoop to empty it completely. "That's to get all of the ice cream out of the scoop in case some of it sticks to the sides.

Blades pressed the lever few times, oddly amused with how all the interlocking pieces got the thin metal band to move back and forth in the scoop.

Kade turned one of the kitchen chairs around and straddled it. "Never thought I'd be giving 'guy tips' to an alien but seriously dude, if you're trying to impress a lady go for chocolate. Ladies love chocolate,"

Blades stopped fiddling with the ice cream scoop and looked at him. "Guys, I'm not trying to impress her, I just thought I'd try to cheer her up,"

Kade rolled his eyes "Uh huh, _sure,"_

Cody just shook his head at Blades to tell him to just ignore his older brother—although Blades did opt for the chocolate portion of the three-flavored ice cream like he said-and showed him how to use the ice cream scoop to dish the ice cream into the bowl.

"Ok, that ought to do it,"

Blades picked up the bowl and stuck a spoon in it and carried the bowl down the hall to Dani's room.

Kade raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you even know where you're going?"

Blades pointed down the hall "Dani's room is the one on the left with the door closed, right?"

"How would you know that?"

Blades rolled his eyes. "I know it's on the left because sometimes she yells at me out her bedroom window and you guys said she's in her room and I don't see her in any of the rooms that are open. Duh!"

He stopped at the door he thought was Dani's room and turned to see Cody had followed him. "It _is_ this one, right?"

Cody nodded before going into his own room. "Yeah that's the one,"

Blades hesitated before hesitantly knocking on the door.

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Dani lie on her bed face down in her pillow, swearing that she wouldn't move from that spot unless she absolutely had to because of the horrible headache she had and the throbbing ache in her stomach that felt like someone hit her in the gut with a baseball bat.

To her surprise, somebody knocked on her door. Dani buried her face into the pillow and pulled the edges over her ears, hoping whoever it was would go away.

When the knocking persisted Dani groaned, stomping up to her bedroom door and throwing open the door and, not really seeing who it was, screamed at whoever was on the other side.

"**WHAT?!"**

Blades squeaked and dropped the bowl on the floor and ran down the hall as fast as his holoform could go. "I'm sorry, please don't kill me!"

Dani realized that she had just screamed at her skittish partner and wondered how he got to be human-sized. "Blades?"

She looked down at what he had dropped and saw it was a bowl of ice cream with a spoon in it; or rather the spoon had fallen out of the bowl and onto the floor when it landed.

The ice cream was mostly chocolate but judging by the flecks of vanilla and strawberry here and there she figured he had picked the chocolate portion out of a pail of Neapolitan ice cream.

"Oh Blades,"

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Blades ran as fast as his holoform could go until he made it back to his real body and dove into his cockpit which closed as his holoform faded out and his real body transformed as he woke up screaming like he just had a nightmare.

Chase and Boulder held up their servos to try to calm the frantic mech. Heatwave did the same although he was also prepared to restrain Blades if he got out of control. "Blades, calm down. What happened?"

Blades stopped trying to flee the fire house and blurted out. "Dani is P. at me!"

Chase was confused by what he said. "I am afraid I am unfamiliar with that phrase,"

"It means 'pissed off'," Kade said as everyone that had been upstairs stepped off the lift.

Much to Blades' chagrin, Dani was among them. She walked up to him holding the bowl of ice cream he had dropped and put one hand on her hip. "Were you the one that dropped this outside my bedroom door?"

Blades flinched and considered his options; which included running away, lying or telling the truth.

Since the other two would have only gotten him in more trouble, Blades opted for the third. "Yeah, you seemed to be having a bad day so I thought I'd try to cheer you up,"

Dani pointed upstairs. "But how did you…"

Always the mediator between the bots and his family, Cody interjected with an explanation. "He used his new holoform. Doc Greene is putting them in all the bots,"

Dani tilted her head in confusion. "Holo-what?"

Chief Burns looked at her. "Doc Greene just brought over these new hologram projectors for the bots that can project solid light holograms called holoforms. He just got done installing one in Blades and when he mentioned that he wanted to do something to 'cheer you up' the boys showed him where the ice cream was and he brought some to your room,"

He put one hand on his hip and the other on his chin. "Although with the way he ran down here screaming I take it you two startled each other,"

Dani looked up at Blades, then at the bowl of ice cream in her hand then she smiled up at Blades. "Ah, Blades, that was so sweet. Thank you,"

Blades blushed and fiddled with his digits. "You're welcome,"

Doc Greene looked up at the three bots that still had yet to have their projectors installed. "So, who's next?"

Boulder, Chase and Heatwave looked at each other uncertainly before Boulder held up his servo. "I'll go,"

Seeming oblivious that the bots were all trepidatious of having him work on them, Doc Greene smiled. "Alright, Boulder, if you would please lie down like Blades was just a moment ago…"

Boulder did as he was asked and Blades stepped up to help Doc Greene; being the team's Cybertronian medic he was more adept for helping with the procedure and there was still the risk of the accident prone doctor coming into contact with energon if he was left to working on the bots' systems.

Once Boulder had his projector installed and tested out he helped install Heatwave's while Blades installed the last one in Chase; the two of them couldn't agree on who should go next so since both Boulder and Blades now knew how to install them they both worked on one of their teammates to get it done faster.

Once everyone had their projectors installed, Doc Green wanted to run some tests to see how well the holoforms worked but they got an emergency call.

Chief Burns checked the monitors and told the others. "Looks like Huxeley Prescott decided to do another episode of his "_I dare me_" segment, this time he tried to scale Griffin Peak and his harness malfunctioned,"

Heatwave pointed towards the door to the garage. "Rescue bots, roll to the rescue!"

Heatwave, Boulder and Chase transformed into vehicle mode while Dani and Blades went to the lift that would take them up to the roof where the helicopter pad was.

While Chief Burns and Graham just had to climb into their partner's alt. modes, Kade had to take a few extra minutes to get his gear back on.

Heatwave huffed impatiently and activated his holoform to, in a flurry of motion that was almost too fast to follow, throw the rest of his partner's gear onto him like he was dressing a doll and then carry him by the scruff and throw him roughly into the driver's seat.

He deactivated his holoform when the door slammed shut and Kade looked down at the screen to see the holographic image of the Rescue bots face appear as he grabbed the wheel to make it look like he was driving; or possibly try to drive for real. "What was that for?"

"You were taking too long," Heatwave said simply and rolled his optics. "And you wonder why we're usually the last ones there?"

After everyone else left, Cody went to the control center and put on his head set to monitor the situation. Frankie and Doc Greene followed to see the bots in action.

While they were watching the bots and Cody gave them a heads-up whenever they hit a delay—for instance, when traffic at the stop light was stalled because the person at the light didn't realize it was green until it had turned red —and giving them an alternative route, the team made their way to the mountain.

While the other bots transformed in preparation for the climb, Dani and Blades flew over the mountain side to find out where Huxeley was.

When they did, Dani radioed it in to the others. "Found him, he's trapped on a ledge about thirty feet above you guys to the left,"

They all followed her directions and Heatwave started climbing up with Kade riding in his cab while Chase and Heatwave made sure no one stumbled upon the rescue scene.

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_Meanwhile, on Huxeley's ledge._

Huxeley struggled with his harness, cursing himself for not actually taking the mountain climbing lessons his co-workers recommended he should get before climbing up Griffin Peak.

'"_Oh, no, I'm a professional. I don't need lessons." Stupid. Stupid. Stupid...'_

But then he remembered the camera was still rolling and smiled at it "Well, viewers, this is quite a pickle I've gotten myself into but do not worry. I always have a way of getting out of these messes,"

Just as he said that, Heatwave climbed up onto the ledge he was on grumbling "Yeah, getting us to save your sorry aft,"

Luckily, it was too quiet for the camera to pick up but Prescott swore he heard someone say something and was about to comment on it but Kade was already climbing out of the Rescue bot's cab and going over to help the stranded newscaster out of his harness, which he was dangling by a foot or two off the ground.

He tugged on the straps only to realize they were tangled up in the buckles; from the looks of it the ropes Huxeley had been using to climb got caught on the harness and instead of carefully detangling himself he reporter yanked on the rope and now the winch was broken and the whole works was a tangled mess, which had resulted in the man's stranding in the first place.

"No good, this thing is seriously tangled,"

Just then, some bushes that were on the end of the ledge they were on started to russle. Naturally, Huxeley's imagination ran away with him. "Ah! What was that?"

Kade struggled to hold the man still with one hand while trying to undo the harness with the other. "Hey, quit squirming,"

Heatwave glared at the bushes, cursing his luck. If it weren't for the fact that Huxeley's camera was still rolling, or that the reporter himself could blab to everybody, he could easily pull the piton out of the rock it had been hammered into or scare off whatever was lurking in the bushes.

However, since the ledge was too narrow for him to climb onto he couldn't just nonchalantly block the creature's path to the humans and since he had to keep their existence a secret all he could really do—unless Kade "commanded" it—was hang there by his elbow joints until he had no other choice but to step in.

'_Stupid fragging camera, why don't you ever shut off when we need you to?'_

Huxeley started freaking out even further. "What if it's a mountain lion?"

Kade clenched his fist and resisted the urge to punch the reporter. "There aren't any mountain lions on Griffin Rock,"

Just as he said that, and at the height of Huxeley's hysterics, the animal stepped out of the bushes and into view. It was a small animal with reddish brown fur, amber colored eyes and black on its legs with white on its face and on the tip of its bushy tail.

Kade huffed "It's just a fox,"

Heatwave looked at the tiny animal that was shyly investigating the noisy intruders and took a few image captures for Boulder—who loved nature—and so he could show the team what had gotten Huxeley so spooked.

A grin came to his face when he realized that said newscaster's camera had recorded he whole incident and broadcasted it to the entire island. '_On second thought… maybe leaving the camera on wasn't so bad,'_

Kade seemed to have the same idea and pointed to the floating camera that always followed Huxeley around like a puppy. "Hey Huxely, say cheese,"

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Back at the base, Cody and Frankie burst out laughing at the look on Prescott's face when he realized he had just made an utter fool of himself… again.

Doc Greene also smiled humorously. "I must say, this is the first rescue I've seen your family do that I wasn't somehow part of,"

They all watched as Kade finally relented and asked Heatwave for help, carefully wording how he did so that Huxeley wouldn't catch on and realize that the Rescue bots weren't really mindless machines.

Heatwave simply reached up and pulled the piton out on the mountainside as though it were a thumb tack, causing the reporter hanging by said piton to drop two feet and land on his bum.

Huxeley grunted and stood up rubbing his backside before turning to the camera and speaking cockily as though the past few minutes never happened. "Well, folks, it looks like we're out of time so I'm afraid we're going to have to save the courageous mountain climb for another segment of 'I DARE ME'!"

He reached up and turned off the camera, leaving them without a direct visual of what was going on up on the ledge aside from what the bots were giving them.

Back at the site, Huxeley looked down at the ground where the rest of the rescue team was looking up at them. He hadn't climbed that far but it still seemed high for him. "Mind getting me down from here?"

Heatwave frowned, wanting nothing more than to climb back down with Kade and leave the guy up there—if he got himself up there, he can get himself down—but their job was to rescue him so they had to make sure he got down somehow.

Kade seemed to be thinking the same thing and huffed before motioning for him to follow as he went to Heatwave "Come on, grab your gear and we'll give you a lift down,"

Heatwave rolled his optics behind his visor, not liking this arrangement one bit, as Prescott grabbed his camera and stuffed all of his mountain climbing gear carelessly into a bag and climbed into the cab along with Kade.

Once they were both inside and buckled in—or at least Kade was—Heatwave let go of the ledge and slid down to the ground, smiling when this made the two humans in his hold scream like little girls, to land in a crouch.

As soon as he was on the ground, the Fire Rescue bot transformed into vehicle mode and opened his doors to let the humans out.

Kade waited a moment to get his bearings before climbing out while Huxeley Prescott simply fell out of the cab to land gracelessly on the ground.

Before leaving the cab, Kade looked at the screen where Heatwave's smiling face appeared and hissed "A little warning next time,"

Heatwave's grin grew "Where's the fun in that?"

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Cody and Frankie were still snickering to themselves about Huxeley Prescott's "Series of self-inflicted unfortunate events" in school the next day.

Frankie giggled. "Oh man, did you see the look on his face when he realized the entire town and anyone else that watches his show was watching when he freaked out because he thought a _mountain lion _was going to get him?"

Cody covered his mouth, trying not to laugh out loud. "And it turned out to be a fox hiding in the bushes. When will he learn?"

Cody looked up at Sasha as the girl came in and sat in her desk next to him. "Hey, Sasha,"

The girl jumped and glanced at him. "Um, Hi Cody," she turned in her chair to look at Frankie and Cody. "So you guys weren't kidding about what you said yesterday. Giant robots, really?"

Cody nodded "Yeah,"

Frankie looked at her with a "Are you kidding me?" look. "Why would we joke about that?"

Cody looked at Frankie and then at Sasha. "By the way, about yesterday, why did you…"

Sasha got out a notebook and a pencil and started doodling. "Save that lady's cat? I used to do that kind of stuff all the time back home. Didn't see why we had to wait for someone…" she looked at Cody and Frankie. "Why?"

Cody frowned; he was referring to why she suddenly ran when she saw Chase and his dad even though she didn't seem to have a problem with Heatwave holding her. '_Maybe she was more afraid of him than she looked…' _

"Mrs. Neederlander's cat gets stuck in trees all the time, we're kind of used to having to get him down from wherever he's gotten himself stuck on a regular basis, but you could have been hurt,"

Sasha grabbed her arm and looked away. "Why would you care?"

Cody's mouth hung open for a moment before he got his usual look of determination on his face. "Because we're friends,"

Sasha looked at him like she never heard that word before in her life. "Seriously?"

Cody and Frankie nodded. "Yeah"

"Why not?"

Sasha twirled her pencil between her fingers. "Thought you were just playing nice because you felt sorry for me, being the new girl and all that,"

Frankie laughed and Cody smiled at her. "No, we just wanted to try to be friends with you. So, want to sit with us at lunch again?"

Sasha considered for a moment then smiled. "Okay,"

Frankie asked what she was drawing and she showed them that that particular notebook was full of pictures of her old home and all the horses she worked with, the actual photographs were taped to the pages she was trying to copy them down onto.

She quickly put the book away when Mr. Robbins came in and started class for the day.

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When school ended for the day, Blades landed in a small field close to the school to wait for Cody to come out of the building. "Um, why are we the ones that got to pick up Cody again? Isn't it Chase and the Chief's turn?"

Dani sighed. "Dad and Chase are currently chasing a speeding driver that thinks he's above the law, probably the same guy that's always getting caught speeding and then tries to outrun Chase…"

Blades snickered "When will he learn?"

Dani rolled her eyes with mirth and continued.

"Boulder and Graham are in the middle of a construction project so they're stuck and Kade snuck away to meet up with Hayley as soon as she's done with her preschool class and since Heatwave still hasn't figured out how to make his holoform look human he can't go anywhere without an actual human,"

Blades sighed. "So I guess it's up to us,"

Dani squinted in mock suspicion. "Sounds like you don't want to pick up Cody,"

Blades didn't realize she was teasing and got flustered. "Oh no, it's not that. I just hope he doesn't take too long because there's this one show I really wanted to see. It's going to start in a few minutes and I don't want to miss it,"

Dani leaned back in her seat with a sigh. "Okay… what show is it?"

"It's called '_As The Kitchen Sinks',_"

Dani sat up. "You watch 'Kitchen Sinks' too?"

The holographic image of Blades' face on his screen nodded. "Yeah, it's about… wait 'too'?" then he realized what Dani just said and grinned. "Dani, do you like that show too?

"Uh, maybe," Dani blushed and noticed the look her partner was giving her. "What's that shit-eating grin for?"

Blades looked confused "What's…" he did a quick internet search of the word Dani used and got a winced with disgust. "EWW!"

Dani crossed her arms and looked at the school entrance, no longer paying attention to Blades, who seemed to want it back.

"Dani?"

No response.

"Dani?"

Again no response so he took a deep intake of air, not that he needed to breath but he had picked up the habit from the humans, and raised his voice slightly.

"Dani-Dani-Dani-Dani-Dani-Dani-Da…"

"What?" Dani asked suddenly.

Blades cried out in surprise before going quiet for a moment and asking sheepishly. "You want to watch it with me? If Cody ever gets his butt out here, that is,"

Dani considered for a moment and smiled. "Ok, sure," her smile disappeared and was replaced with a pleading look "But _please _don't tell anyone. I don't usually watch soap operas but…"

Blades nodded. "I know, right? Tonight's episode is supposed to be the one where we find out what Bob left for Jack in his will,"

Dani looked at him with confusion. "I must have missed an episode. Last one I saw was the one where Donna thought she was pregnant,"

"She's not, which means her affair with Gordon will remain secret,"

Dani rolled her eyes '_Never thought I'd be talking soap operas with someone, much less an alien,' _she looked at her watch. "Where _is _Cody? He should have been out here by now"

Blades immediately jumped to several different worst-case-scenario conclusions as soon as she said that. "Do you think something might have happened to him?"

Dani took off her helmet and set it on the console. "He probably just doesn't know we're here yet. I'll go see if he's waiting inside. Wait here, and don't talk to strangers" she added the last part as a joke as she unbuckled her seat belt and got out of her seat.

Blades opened the canopy of his alt. mode to let her out. "I'm an alien robot that transforms into a helicopter and has to pretend to be a mindless machine around just about everyone. What could possibly be stranger than that?"

Dani pretended to manually close the canopy even though Blades was actually slowly closing it himself. "Just behave, okay?"

"Yes ma'am,"

Dani jogged over to the school building and went inside to try to find her brother, leaving Blades alone with his thoughts.

A few minutes later a young girl around Cody and Frankie's age came out of the building and started to walk home but then she saw him and stopped.

Realizing a stranger was looking at him, Blades stayed as still as possible so as not to slip up and reveal he could move on his own in the event she could see he didn't have a pilot.

The girl looked around to see if anyone was about before cautiously walking towards Blades, looking around for anyone that might see her until she got about halfway to him and stopped to look him over.

Blades froze up altogether as the girl inched closer as though he were a dog she wanted to pet but was afraid he would bite her.

She stopped once she had stepped into his shadow and relaxed, seeing nothing bad had happened yet.

"Wow, so cool," She looked him over again, this time taking note of every inch and angle of his frame with a small smile. "I wish I could fly like you can. Must be nice, to be way up there in the sky…"

Blades silently mused '_It's really not all it's cracked up to be,' _but then he saw the smile disappear as the girl looked down at the ground and gripped the strap of her back pack like lifeline with one hand while the other hand rubbed that arm like it was sore.

"…Where nothing bad can get you," The girl seemed to realize that she was talking to a _helicopter _and that said helicopter probably belonged to someone and looked at her watch. "Dang it, I'm going to be late again. Well, goodbye,"

She gave Blades a polite wave that made him wish he could wave back as she took off at a run across the field they were in until she was out of sight.

Just then Cody and Dani came up to him. "Hey, Blades, who were you just talking to?"

Blades opened the canopy to let his passengers in and answered Dani's question as soon as they were inside. "I don't know, she just came up and started talking to me. I didn't say or do anything, I swear,"

Cody fastened his seatbelt. "Her name's Sasha, she's new here. Didn't Chase or Heatwave tell you about how she tried to get Mrs. Neederlander's cat down herself and nearly fell out of the tree?"

Blades nodded "Oh, her. She seems nice,"

Cody smirked as he put on the spare helmet they had in Blades' cockpit. "She wasn't all that nice to Joey and his pals after P.E. today,"

Blades looked at him "Who's Joey?"

Cody crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat. "He's just some jerk who's a year older than me,"

Dani looked at Blades' holoscreen. "Remember Milo? The guy that built his own hot air balloon when Huxely tried to convince everyone there was an alien invasion going on and ended up crashing when he accidently popped the balloon with the pitch fork he was holding? Joey's his younger brother,"

Cody nodded. "He picks on everybody but he's been extra mean to Sasha since she got here. Yesterday he and his friends threw milk cartons at her… and then he threw mashed potatoes at my head when I asked if she wanted to sit with me and Frankie so she wouldn't be sitting alone,"

Blades gasped "That… that… _meanie! _Why would they do that?"

Dani looked at Cody, almost afraid to ask. "And what happened today?"

Cody looked out the window. "They tried picking on her at lunch again. Frankie and I asked him to stop and he grabbed me by the shirt and was about to beat me up when a teacher stopped him. Joey tried to blame the whole thing on me but the teacher didn't believe him so he and his buddies skipped class when I had P.E. and dragged me into the boy's locker room to give me a swirly,"

Blades looked at him. "What's a 'swirly'?"

Dani tightened her grip on the controls with a frown. "It's when someone sticks someone's head in a toilet and holds them down while they flush it,"

Blades gasped. "That's horrible! How did you get away?"

Cody smiled and looked at them. "Funny thing is, they didn't get that far. Sasha saw them drag me into the boy's locker room after telling me what they were doing. She actually followed us in there and hit Joey in the back of the head to knock him down and pulled me out of there so we could go tell the teacher,"

The smile fell. "But one of the bullies went and told the principal they had just gone into the locker room to get something and she went in there and beat them all up. The reason I took so long was because I had to explain to the principal what _really _happened,"

Dani looked at him. "I'm glad you stood up to the bullies Cody, but we're going to have to tell dad about this,"

Cody frowned, it was always difficult for any of the Burns kids to tell their dad about things like this since he was the police Chief; not only because they didn't want to bother him when he had more important things to worry about but because whenever they got him involved it was like getting the police involved and people aren't supposed to do that for every little thing.

Their conversation was interrupted when the Chief himself called them on the comm. links.

:Emergency, team. A speeding car just crashed into some fuel tanks after the driver lost control. The driver was able to exit the vehicle in time but the tanks exploded and caused a nearby building to catch fire,"

They heard Heatwave's voice as he patched into the conversation. :I'll be there as soon as I can get Kade away from Hayley.:

Blades pointed out "and I'll need to stop and get the scoop claw so I can help too,"

:Alright, Chase and I are already here. Meet us at the warehouses downtown. We'll try to do what we can until you get here,"

Dani's eyes widened. "Dad… weren't Graham and Boulder working there today?"

Chief Burns sighed and said somberly. "I know, they're trapped inside the one that caught fire,"

* * *

_**A.N.: DUN DUN DUUUN! **_

_**Anyone catch any references? First one that does and points it out in a review gets an exclusive sneak peak to an upcoming chapter.**_

_**Quick shout out to the people that reviewed and/or added; Katie Gibbs, youllbeinmyheart1997, HakariFighter, VectorSigma101, WaterAriesFireTaurus, Nightfury97, nindroidlover14, nbilling133, JackalHound3 (Guest), WonderBoyRobin,**_


	3. Chapter 3

Dents and Bruises

Talking:

"English or other Earth language"

"_**Cybertronian"**_

'_Thoughts'_

:Comm. Links:

(Bond talk)

"_Recordings or telephone conversations"_

_Flashback or change of time or place_

Time changes:

Nano-klick=1/2 a klik. Klik= less than a second. Breem (cybertronian minute) = 8 minutes. Cycle=hour. Joor (Cybertronian hour) = 6 hours. Solar cycle=day. Megacycle= 1 week. Orn= 13 days. Groon= 1 month. Deca-orn = 3 months. Stellar cycle= 1 year. Vorn=83 years.

Rated T for good reasons, the ones in this chapter being language, slash, hinted child abuse, mentions of slash, talks about sensitive topics and anything else I might have missed.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except my OC's or any original ideas I patched in to fill in any blanks left by the show. If you recognize it from somewhere else it's probably not mine.

* * *

Graham slowly came to, his whole world a haze and everything was way too hot. He wondered why this was until he started coughing on smoke.

"F-fire…?" then he remembered what had happened.

_*Flashback*_

_Graham and Boulder were updating the security systems so that no one—namely Miles and Evan or Dr. Morroco—could steal anything from them in the ware houses when suddenly they heard the sound of screeching tires and a crash outside._

_Boulder looked out the window and launched himself at Graham the way a cat pounces on a bird. "Graham, look out!"_

_Then there was the sound of glass shattering and debris hitting metal and everything went dark._

_*End Flashback*_

Graham coughed as he called out for his partner. "Boulder… _*cough* *cough* _Boulder! Where are you?"

"Graham, are you alright?"

Graham looked up and saw Boulder was directly above him in a planking position, keeping the roof from collapsing down on them.

"Boulder, what…" he coughed on more smoke, it was getting thicker now. "What happened?"

Boulder looked down at his human partner, who was still on the ground where he had landed when the explosion hit and was now trying to fix his glasses, and said. "The fuel tanks outside exploded and the warehouse caught fire,"

Carefully standing up, Graham looked around and tried to see through the smoke and flames; what he saw was that the building was becoming more unstable by the second. "This place is going to come down. Can you move?"

Boulder shifted but found he could only move a little bit and looked behind him to see why that was and found that a couple of steel girders were laid across his legs, pinning them, and a large slab of the ceiling was across his lower back, preventing him from reaching back to push them off. "No good, I'm pinned,"

He looked around and saw the small side door was open and gently shoved Graham towards it. "Graham, go,"

Graham looked at the open door and then up at Boulder; a couple months ago if anyone told him to just leave the Rescue bot behind he would have done it without any second thoughts besides '_It's just a machine, machines can be replaced',_ but now…

Graham hesitated. "Boulder, hang on, maybe we can get the girders off your…"

He was cut off by a coughing fit that brought him to his knees, the smoke was starting to sting his eyes now.

Boulder caught him before he fell to the ground and racked his processors for a possible solution; while he wasn't an emergency vehicle like the others he was still a Rescue Bot. '_Come on, Boulder, you're a Rescue Bot. RESCUE, for Primus sakes,'_

Then he remembered he had a holoform now and activated it; since he had stayed up most of the night tinkering with it his was the only one that looked human.

He looked down at his holoform—which was of a tall sturdily built man with tanned skin, golden eyes and dark hair wearing a hard hat that was the same green he was with a matching flannel shirt, blue jeans and brown work boots—and admired his handiwork before looking at the debris that trapped his real body.

'_According to the Doc and the tests we ran, our holoforms are just as strong as our real bodies. I should be able to move those,' _he looked down at Graham. '_First things first, I need to help Graham,'_

He lifted up his partner as though he weighed no more than a novel and carried him over to the opening he had told his partner to go to before and ducked through it just as Chase had come around the building to check if the area was clear.

However, Chase didn't recognize his teammate's human holoform and thought it was a regular human and treated him as such. "Please evacuate the area, citizen,"

Boulder looked up at Chase. "Chase, it's me, Boulder. I'm using my holoform,"

Chase realized his error and stopped using the fake monotone. "My apologies, Boulder,"

Chief looked over and saw Boulder carefully place Graham on the ground and ran over after telling the man he was talking to to stay put. "Graham,"

Boulder held up his hands and reassured the Chief. "He'll be alright, he just lost consciousness because of the smoke,"

Chief looked at the holoform, not quite believing what he was seeing. "Boulder?"

The holoform nodded. "My real body is pinned underneath part of the ceiling inside so I used my holoform to bring Graham out here,"

Chief Burns knelt down next to Graham to check his pulse and if he was breathing, letting out a sigh of relief that he was. "Remind me to thank the Doc for giving you guys those things,"

He stood up and addressed the two bots that were there. "Heatwave and Kade will be here any minute and Dani and Blades are on their way, in the meantime we'll see what we can do to get you out of the fire Boulder,"

Boulder nodded and said "According to Doc Greene our holoforms are just as strong as our real bodies. I'm going to go see if I can dig myself out with mine,"

Chief Burns considered this and nodded "Alright, but be careful,"

As Boulder ran back into the ware house, Graham started to come around with a groan.

Chief Burns grabbed his son's shoulder. "Graham, are you alright?"

Graham nodded. "Yeah, I'll be okay," his voice was raspy after breathing in that much smoke. He looked around and saw he was outside. "How did I get out here?"

Chief Burns helped his son up when he saw he was trying to stand. "You passed out inside the warehouse because of the smoke and Boulder used his holoform to carry you out here,"

He looked over and saw the man he had been speaking with before was trying to sneak away. "Hey, Chase, it looks like our old friend is trying to get away again. Could you make sure he stays put?"

"Certainly" Chase trotted over and blocked the man's exit. "Halt, citizen, you have been asked to remain where you are until the situation has been handled. After which you will be embraced by the firm, but fair, hand of justice,"

Just then Heatwave pulled up and transformed as soon as Kade jumped out of his alt. mode. "_**Why do you always say 'embraced by the firm but fair hand of justice'? Can't you just say you're going to either arrest them or write them a ticket or something?"**_

"_**Either way justice will prevail,"**_ Chase spun around to slide his ped in the path of the man when he tried to sneak past him. "I repeat: Halt, citizen!"

While the two were talking Kade had run up to his dad and Graham. "What happened here?"

Chief Burns sighed. "That speeding driver Chase and I were after lost control of the car. He got out but the car crashed into some fuel tanks and caused them to explode and the building caught fire,"

Graham pointed at the building. "Boulder's still inside. He used his holoform to bring me out here after I passed out from the smoke and went back inside for his body,"

Heatwave walked up to the building and started to put out the fire by shooting water out of the nozzles in his servos while Kade hooked up a hose to a nearby fire hydrant to help.

A few minutes later Blades arrived and started dumping loads of water and fire retardant onto the building.

:Sorry we're late. Had to go back to the firehouse to drop off Cody and get the scoop claw.:

Chief Burns activated his comm. link. "Better late than never, Dani. Glad you two made it,"

Blades did a quick head count and noticed someone was missing. "Where's Boulder?"

Graham answered him. :Boulder's still inside. Part of the ceiling came down on his legs, he's trapped.:

Heatwave touched one digit to the side of his helm and activated his comm. link. :Boulder, can you hear me?:

:Loud and clear, Heatwave. I'm trying to dig myself out with my holoform but there's these two girders across my legs that are still partially attached to the ceiling. One wrong move with those and the whole place could come down.:

:Okay, we'll help dig you out as soon as we get the worst of the fire out of the way.:

Heatwave cut off the comm. line and used both servos to put out the fire while Blades dropped another load of water on the building.

Several dousing of water later, what little glass that remained in the warehouse windows exploded and more flames erupted from them.

Inside the warehouse, Boulder instinctively flinched away from the hot shards of glass and other debris from the windows that fell on him, unintentionally kicking away one of the girders that both pinned him down and held up the rest of the ceiling that his shoulders were braced against.

"_**Oh, scrap" **_the uncharacteristic curse slipped out of Boulder's vocalizer when his arm-servos gave out as the rest of the roof came down on him.

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Outside, everyone watched as the roof of the ware house caved in on itself like a house of cards.

"Boulder…" Without really thinking about it Graham ran to the warehouse, only to be stopped by Kade.

"Hold it right there, bro. Leave this to the pros," he ran over to the building, pulling on his oxygen mask as he ran.

Heatwave was also going over to the ware house and looked down at his human partner. "If that's true then why are you here?"

Kade voice was muffled by his oxygen mask. "Ha ha, Shut up,"

Heatwave rolled his optics as he broke through what was left of the garage door on the warehouse and started removing as much as the debris as he could lift, calling out for his teammate in Cybertronian.

"_**Boulder! Boulder, where are you? Answer me, slaggit!"**_

Heatwave dropped the piece of beam he was holding and jumped back as Blade's scoop claw dropped down and lifted away a good sized chunk of debris, revealing a beat up green servo.

"Boulder!"

Heatwave lifted the debris that was covering the rest of the mech and shouldered it aside while Kade put out any lingering fires so they would stop spreading to keep the blaze off of the Rescue bots while Heatwave got Boulder out.

When he finally got the slab of debris out of the way, Heatwave saw that Boulder had been knocked into stasis by the collapsing roof. "He's out cold, gonna have the drag him out,"

Heatwave started to do just that but then he realized a problem. "Scrap, if I let go of this thing it will just fall right back down on top of him,"

He leaned against the sedan-sized chunk of the roof and touched one digit to his comm. link. :Chase, Blades, could one of you give me a servo here? I can't pull Boulder out and lift this scrap off him at the same time.:

Seeing Chase was busy with crowd control—a small mob of onlookers have gathered to see what was going on—Blades landed outside the ware house and opened his canopy to let Dani out. "I'll go. You check on Graham,"

Dani grabbed the first aid kit and ran over to her brother while Blades transformed and timidly went over to the opening in the garage door that Heatwave had made looking around to see if any more of it was going to fall.

"Anytime, Blades…" said Fire Rescue bot growled, making Blades jump and scurry over to Boulder to grab him under his arm-servos and drag him clear of the debris so Heatwave could drop the rubble he was holding and the two carried Boulder outside.

Blades and Graham examined Boulder while Heatwave and Kade finished putting out the rest of the fire and Dani stubbornly followed her equally stubborn brother, trying to put a burn salve and bandages on his cuts and burns.

"Hold still Graham,"

Graham shrugged his sister off. "I'm fine, Dani,"

Dani huffed and put one hand on her hip while the other hung limp at her side, holding the roll of gauze she had been using. "I still think you should get checked over, just in case,"

Graham looked down at Boulder. "Boulder first. He's worse off than I am,"

Chief Burns came over to them and looked at all of them before looking down at Boulder. "How bad is he?"

Blades tried to wake him up but shook his helm when it didn't work. "He must have gone into stasis lock when the roof fell…"

His olfactory sensors flared when he scented the air and he caught the smell of burnt rubber. "…and if that smell is what I think it is some of his wires or tubing might have melted, but we won't know for sure until we can get him back to the firehouse,"

Chief Burns nodded and called the fire station. "Cody?"

:Yeah, dad?:

"See if you can get a hold of Doc Greene, we might need his help fixing Boulder up," he cut off the call and looked up at Blades, who knew more about Cybertronian anatomy than he did. "Is it safe to move him?"

Blades considered for a moment before answering. "Very, _very_ carefully,"

Chief Burns nodded "Alright, if we can't just carry him I can see if the owners of the warehouses can lend us a flatbed to bring him home with,"

Chief Burns looked over to where Chase was preventing the driver they had been after earlier from leaving while also trying to keep the crowd back by moving back and forth like a sheep dog to block anyone that crossed the line and repeating the phrase "Halt, you are required to remain here," to the driver and "Please keep the perimeter clear," to the other people.

"Now if you all will excuse me, I need to speak to a man about a speeding car…" he went over to the man with long dark hair who was wearing a leather jacket and white pants and crossed his arms. "Now do you see why we have to obey the speed limit?"

He pointed at the fuel tanks that still had the man's car embedded into it, the smoldering warehouse and Boulder, who was lying on the ground like a toy that had gotten run over by a car.

The man looked at the damage he had caused and then back at the police officer. "I'm sorry Chief, I tried to stop when you were trying to pull me over but my brakes wouldn't work,"

Chief Burns saw how that would have made sense but since this man was a repeat offender for speeding with a reputation for reckless driving on top of all the damage he just caused, he couldn't just let it slide. "I know, Raoul, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to see your license and registration anyway,"

Raoul took out his wallet out and got out his driver's license but then he realized something. "Uh, my insurance card's in the… car,"

They both looked at the wreckage, which was burned to a crisp when the fuel tanks blew, and the Chief sighed as he looked back at Raoul. "Well, luckily I've seen it enough to have most of it memorized and your information is already in the system,"

He held up the driver's license he had been handed and went over to Chase who had transformed into his alt. mode so Chief Burns could update the police computer data base. "Unfortunately, this also means I'm going to have to suspend your license,"

Raoul gawked at him. "My license?'

Chief Burns looked at him sharply. "Only temporarily, but if I find out you have been driving anywhere within the next three months it will become permanent,"

He quickly entered the information into the terminal in Chase's console and took out a special stamp and stamped the words "Suspended" across the card.

Chief Burns got out and handed the man the license back. "This is the third time I busted you for speeding and reckless driving and this time you not only caused damage to city property you endangered the lives of everyone in the area, including the two people inside the warehouse you just lit up,"

Raoul hung his head in shame as he took the now useless laminated card back and put it in his wallet. "Guess I'd better get used to walking," he looked up at Chief Burns. "By the way, you said there were two people in the warehouse. Are they alright or did they…"

Chief Burns looked at where Graham was looking over Boulder as best he could without any tools. "One of them was my boy Graham who was doing some work on the warehouse's security systems, the other…"

He quickly thought up a half-truth. "… was a friend of his that was helping him out. He was badly burned and needs a doctor but he's refusing to go until they get the Construction bot loaded up to be transported for repairs,"

What he didn't say which "he" was which; Boulder _was _the one that was helping Graham and was badly injured but it was _Graham _who refused to leave or be checked over until the mech was safe.

Raoul seemed to be relieved when he realized no one had perished in the fire and asked "There wasn't anything important in there, was there?"

Chief Burns looked over at Graham; or rather he made it look like he was looking at Graham, he actually glanced up at Chase who shook his helm minutely and told him through the comm. link :We emptied the warehouse of its wares this morning so none of it was damaged or in the way while Graham and Boulder were working.:

Chief Burns turned back to Raoul and relayed the message to him, wording it to make it look like he just remembered that was what happened.

Luckily the warehouse supervisors _were _kind enough to loan them a flatbed trailer and a truck. Graham rode with the dock worker driving said truck while Blades flew to the fire house to get everything ready to fix up Boulder once they got there with him.

Kade and Heatwave stayed to make sure the fire was put out for good while Chase and Chief Burns dispelled the crowd and gave Raoul a ride home so there was no chance of him getting a hold of a vehicle and driving himself.

When Blades and Dani got to the fire house, the Copterbot didn't even bother landing on the roof as he normally did, he just touched down in the drive way.

Dani was confused by this as she jumped out and pulled off her helmet. "Why did you land out here, Blades?"

Blades transformed and opened the garage door. "Landing on the roof and taking the lift down here and then down to the bunker would have taken too long,"

He ran inside as soon as the door was open enough for him to duck under. "I need to get the med. bay ready for when they get here with Boulder,"

When he stepped off the bot's lift down into the bunker, Blades passed the control center where Cody spun around in the chair. "I called Doc Greene like Dad told me to. By the way, Optimus Prime called while you guys were out, I told him what was going on. He said he would call back later and if you need any help to call someone named Ratchet,"

Blades raised an optic ridge. "The Autobots' medic?" he had heard stories about the C.M.O. and after meeting the mech when Optimus had him examine the Rescue bots when they first arrived on Earth he believed every single one of them.

But while the grouchy old medic made him nervous, Blades knew if he would be a nervous wreck if he started working on Boulder and suddenly realized he had no idea what he was doing.

Cody nodded. "Yeah, and Ratchet seemed to hear us because he said he might not be able to come here but if you really need his help he can talk you through it on the comm.s,"

Blades took a deep intake of to calm himself and let it out in an obviously forced sigh of relief. "Oh, that's good,"

Just then they got a call from upstairs from Dani "Guys, they're here,"

Blades clenched and unclenched his fists to get his servos to stop shaking before grabbing a wheeled frame that was under the med. berth and cranked it up the attach to the underside of the berth which detached from the wall to make a bot-sized gurney.

"Show time" he pulled the gurney with him as he ran over to the lift.

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_Meanwhile_

A young girl walked up the dirt road known as Canyon road, humming a song she had learned in music class that day.

The wind plucked at a few strands of her raven hair that had fallen out of her ponytail and she looked up to the ridge that was known to the locals as "Griffin Crest"

'_I wonder why they have a fence around it?_ _Are they trying to keep something in or are they trying to keep something out?'_

The girl shrugged. '_Oh well, probably not my business,' _the girl continued her walk until she got to an old cabin that still had the "sold" sign in the front yard.

The girl quietly let herself in and looked around to see if anyone was home and closed the door behind her, wincing when the sound was louder than anticipated. '_Ah, Crabapples! Not exactly a ninja, are you?'_

The girl froze for a moment to listen for any signs that someone might have heard that. Hearing none, she went into the kitchen to fix herself a quick snack to eat while she worked on her homework.

Since no one else was around, she thought she would take advantage of this fact and sit at the table to work for her homework/snack time rather than in her room like she normally did.

However she lost track of time and let her guard down, gasping when she realized it was dark out and she could see headlights shining into the window as a car pulled into the driveway.

'_Oh no, they're here,"_

The girl threw her books and papers into her back pack and ran up the stairs just as the door opened and someone came staggering through. She prayed they didn't see her but ran faster as a man's voice shouted with a slur. "Hey! You…"

She just made it to her bedroom but somehow the person chasing her caught up and pulled the door closed. "Where do you think you're going?"

The girl cried out as the door closed on her hand.

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Blades walked to his quarters in a daze, he had been operating on Boulder ever since they brought him back to the firehouse.

Even with the help of Graham and Doc Greene and with Ratchet talking them through anything they didn't know how to do—just because Blades was the team's medic didn't mean he knew everything about Cybertronian medicine—via the comm. line they used it took until late at night to get him patched up.

Now it was up to the mech's own self-repair systems and adequate rest to get him back on his treads and peds.

Graham had fallen asleep in the med. bay in the chair he sat in when he decided to keep him partner company and Doc Greene went home so the Copterbot was going to his quarters for some recharge himself, dreading spending the night in his room alone after having a roommate for so long.

On his way back to the quarters, Blades found Chase in the main area by the T.V., watching the late night news if the sounds were any indication. "_**Chase, what are you doing up so late?"**_

Chase looked up at him. "_**As it would appear, you were correct in your implied assumption that Heatwave was close to having his heat cycle. While we all agreed to share quarters in the event one of us need to be isolated when we moved in I did not feel comfortable letting myself in while you were with Boulder in the med. bay,"**_

He glanced at the T.V. "_**That and I heard many humans referring to this program called '**_C.O.P.S.' _**and I wanted to see what it is about,"**_

He looked back up at Blades. "_**How's Boulder?"**_

Blades sighed "_**He'll be okay… I think. Right now it's a waiting game," **_he looked down the hallway that went to where the quarters were and slowly turned to look back at Chase. "_**Heatwave's in your guys' quarters, right?"**_

"_**Yes, why do you ask?" **_

Blades hesitated before walking away. "_**The room is yours tonight. You remember the code?"**_

Chase looked up from glancing at the screen again only to find Blades was already gone.

He picked up the Cybertronian sized remote that Doc Greene had made especially for them and debated whether he should turn down the volume so he wouldn't disturb any of his fellow Rescue Bots since Cybertronians have excellent hearing and everyone else would be trying to recharge or if he should turn the volume up in case Blades and Heatwave weren't actually planning on recharging.

Chase blushed at the thought of the latter option as he pressed the small button with the plus sign on it, not wanting to think of his teammates doing… well, whatever they were doing it had better not be on _his _berth.

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Heatwave lay on his berth, trying to recharge but couldn't; his entire lower body ached, his spark was pulsating so vigorously that it felt like it was trying to break its way out of his chest cavity and his whole frame felt like he was on fire.

After what felt like hours of solitary confinement in the quarters he usually shared with Chase, he heard a knock at the door.

He knew it wouldn't be Chase since the police mech knew the current situation and none of the humans were able to knock on the door hard enough the make that much noise so that left only Blades and Boulder and since Boulder was in the med. bay…

"_**H-Heatwave?"**_

'_Yep, it's Blades,' _Heatwave winced as he hauled himself to his peds and staggered to the door, he almost opened it but stopped himself. '_Get it together Heatwave,'_

"_**Blades?"**_

He heard a scraping noise against the door and Blades answered. "_**Hey, Heatwave,"**_

His lover sounded shook up and he wanted to make sure he was alright but he had a responsibility to his team to check on Boulder as well. "_**How's Boulder?"**_

Blades told him the same thing he told Chase and bit his lower lip component before sheepishly asking "_**Heatwave… can I come in?"**_

Heatwave took a shuddering intake to calm himself and his systems, his frame shaking from both "excitement" and an attempt to restrain himself. '_Down boy…' "__**Blades, I… maybe it's not the best time for that,"**_

Blades pressed his helm and his servos against the door and leaned on it, not knowing Heatwave was doing the same on his side. "_**Heatwave… I ran into Chase in the main area, he told me what was going on…"**_

"_**Slagger,"**_

Blades continued. "_**Heatwave, remember what we talked about last time this happened?"**_

Heatwave rattled his memory banks. '_Pit, I don't know. That was eons ago,' "__**Blades, that was over thousands of vorns ago,"**_

Thinking that meant Heatwave had changed his mind about it—about how they agreed they would help each other through their heat cycles when Blades felt he was ready for interface—Blades hung his helm and his shoulders drooped. "_**Oh, well, um… it's okay. I just wanted to help you but if you don't want me to I understa…"**_

He was cut off when the door opened and he was suddenly in Heatwave's arm-servos and the mech gave him a heated kiss; both figuratively and literally given how Heatwave was living up to his designation right then.

Heatwave broke the kiss and said with his vents heaving "_**You talk too much,"**_

Blades blushed as Heatwave led him over to his berth and the two sat down._** "So… how do you want to do this?"**_

Heatwave shrugged and kissed Blades again. "_**Don't care… as long as… we do… **__something,"_

Blades reciprocated the kiss but knew Heatwave was going to need more than that in a moment. He adjusted his grip on Heatwave and said between kisses. "_**I know… but… gotta be…"**_

He pulled away and put a coy digit to Heatwave's lip components. "_**Careful," **_

The red mech growled impatiently so Blades grasped his shoulder and explained. "_**Heatwave, with you being in heat there's an increased chance of you sparking and you won't be able to do your job very well if you're Carrying,"**_

Blades pulled away from Heatwave and looked down at the berth padding and dug his servos into it "_**And from what I've seen you probably don't want sparklings anyway,"**_

Heatwave paused for a moment and lifted Blades' chin to kiss him before saying "_**Robo-baby was cute but it felt like Doc was mocking us,"**_

Blades smiled, elated that Heatwave didn't really hate kids. '_So there's hope yet… in the future anyway,'_

Heatwave convulsed and his cooling fans kicked on. "_**If we're going to do something better do it now," **_he looked up at Blades with feverish optics and panted. "_**Firewalls on?"**_

Blades ran a quick systems check and nodded. "_**Yeah, yours?"**_

Heatwave nodded and pulled Blades close. "_**Anything else we gotta do to be… you know… careful?"**_

Blades pushed away from Heatwave, ignoring the mech's whimper and went over to the door.

"_**Blades, you horrible tease!"**_

Blades locked the door and made sure the human door into the room was also locked before turning around with a mock-hurt look. "_**I was making sure the door was locked," **_he got a mischievous smirk and slowly walked towards the berth with a slight hip sway. "_**Why? Did you **__want __**me to tease?"**_

When he got back to the berth Heatwave pulled him close and fell back so the Copter bot landed on top of him. "_**Blades… anything else?"**_

Blades considered for a moment before rolling over and switching your positions. "_**How about you spike me this time? That way there's no chance of you sparking at all. I can't go **_knocking up_** our team leader, now can I?"**_

Heatwave rolled his optics at the human phrase and managed to get out one last—partially—coherent thought through his vocalizer before his mating protocols took over. "_**Blades, are you sure?"**_

Blades nodded shakily. "_**Y-yes, I said I was ready, didn't I?"**_

Heatwave ran his digits along the transformation seams in Blades' side and said in a husky voice "_**And what might my 'Cutting Edge' want me to do to him?"**_

Blades stiffened at the nickname he hadn't heard in so long it might has well have belonged to a stranger, his engines revved not unlike they did right before one of his races back on Cybertron way back when as he reached up and wrapped his arm-servos around his lover's neck.

When he broke the kiss he whispered shakily. "_**Make the pain go away, Heatwave. Yours and mine. Help me forget today…"**_

Heatwave looked down at the orange-and-white mech for a moment before grinning wolfishly and nuzzling a hot spot in the crook of his neck. "_**Babe, when we're through here you'll be lucky if you can remember which way is up!"**_

* * *

_**A.N.: Damn, that was fast. **_

_**Anyone catch any references? Anyone who does and points I out in a review gets an exclusive sneak peak at an upcoming chapter.**_

_**Quick shout out to the people that reviewed an or added; HikariFighter, TransformersBeeFan, nightfury97, SierLeAn, Chasm-chan, VectorSigma101, nindroidlover14,**_

_**Comments, suggestions and predictions are welcome, any flames will be dealt with accordingly.**_


	4. Chapter 4

Dents and Bruises

Talking:

"English or other Earth language"

"_**Cybertronian"**_

'_Thoughts'_

:Comm. Links:

(Bond talk)

"_Recordings or telephone conversations"_

_Flashback or change of time or place_

Time changes:

Nano-klick=1/2 a klik. Klik= less than a second. Breem (cybertronian minute) = 8 minutes. Cycle=hour. Joor (Cybertronian hour) = 6 hours. Solar cycle=day. Megacycle= 1 week. Orn= 13 days. Groon= 1 month. Deca-orn = 3 months. Stellar cycle= 1 year. Vorn=83 years.

Rated T for good reasons, the ones in this chapter being language, slash, mentions of slash, talks about sensitive topics and anything else I might have missed.

_A.N.: Just a little FYI, I've never had to fill out a missing child report so I'm just estimating how it's done on here. If I got anything wrong please let me know and I will change it_

Disclaimer: I own nothing except my OC's or any original ideas I patched in to fill in any blanks left by the show—for example, the little backstory on Blades was something I made up—if you recognize it from somewhere else it's probably not mine.

* * *

Heatwave came out of recharge drowsy and feeling an electric tingle of a recent overload lingering in his circuitry and on his plating.

'_Ugh, what time is it?' _he checked his chronometer and found it was almost five in the morning.

'_Pit, Chase doesn't even get up this early… or does he?' _Heatwave's mind briefly revisited all the times he had woken up in the morning and found the police bot had been up for hours already.

'_I'm going back into recharge, Primus help anyone that says otherwise,_' Heatwave then realized he felt something warm in the berth next to him. He opened his optic shutters and looked around to see Blades recharging next to him, on his side so he was facing him.

Heatwave looked over at his berth mate and suddenly all the memories of what had happened the night before. '_Whoa, that actually happened…'_

He lifted the tarp that had somehow ended up on top of them and saw the scuff marks on his and Blades' plating in each other's colors and twitched his nasal ridge when the smells of transfluid and ozone wafted into his olfactory sensors. '_Better get cleaned up before anyone else sees us…'_

He begrudgingly climbed off the berth and snuck out of the room down the hall to get a bucket full of water and some rags to give himself a quick "spot wash" and buff out the worst of the scratches.

'_There, that outta do it," _he set the bucket and rags on the floor so Blades could clean up when he came out of recharge and crawled into the berth next to the mech to get some more recharge himself.

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Blades woke up with a pounding processor ache and an unidentifiable throbbing in his lower chassis to the sound of an alarm going off. He winced and covered his audios to block out the painfully loud sound before rolling over and blacking out again.

A few minutes later he opened his optics to see Heatwave shaking him awake. "_**You know, being a Rescue bot it's not really a good idea to sleep through the alarm,"**_

"_**I'm up!" **_Blades quickly sat up and instantly regretted that decision as he clutched his helm and leaned against the wall. "_**Oohh, I'm just going to wait until the room stops spinning…"**_

Heatwave looked at the Copterbot with concern before grabbing the bucket full of water from before and handing Blades a rag as he pulled the tarp off of him. "_**Come on Blades, let's get you cleaned up before we go save some people. Unless you **__want __**everyone in Griffin Rock to see you covered in fluids and scuff marks with my coloring,"**_

Blades grabbed the cloth and started scrubbing at his legs and chassis while Heatwave grabbed another cloth and helped him so it would get done faster.

When they were done they rushed out into the main area where Chase and the humans were getting debriefed on the situation.

While Chief was telling them about how a couple of campers had gone missing the night before and had just called 911 saying that some of their party was injured and they were now lost in the woods with no idea where they were, Chase subtly leaned closer to Blades and whispered "_**You missed a spot,"**_

Blades glanced down and saw Chase was looking at his shoulder where a bright red scuff mark sat, almost seeming to mock him after he had cleaned up the rest of his frame.

He quickly licked his servo and scrubbed at his shoulder as Chief finished the debriefing and Heatwave said "Rescue Bots, Roll to the rescue!"

Everyone else left while Graham sat in the control center since Boulder was still out like a light from being knocked out the day before and the sedatives they gave him during surgery; Blades was right when he surmised that the coating on some of his wiring—which was actually part of the bots' nervous system—was melted by the heat of the fire along with part of the hydraulic tubing in his shoulder.

It took the rest of the previous day and a good part of the night to replace the burnt bits and now they were waiting for Boulder's self-repair systems to integrate the replacement wiring into his systems before letting him back on duty.

Graham looked in the direction of the med. bay. "Get well soon, Boulder,"

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Cody flinched when his comm. link started buzzing in pocket during second period; he had forgotten to turn it off so it was alerting him of an emergency.

His English teacher, Ms. Blu, wasn't amused as she turned around to look at her students, holding her chalk poised to continue writing on the board. "Was that someone's cell phone just now?"

Cody sank lower in his seat, with a guilty expression on his face and tried to inconspicuously turn off his comm. link.

"Sorry ma'am, that was my fault," Everyone turned around to see who interrupted class.

Cody looked over at Sasha; she was the one that spoke up. '_What are you doing, Sasha?'_

Ms. Blu crossed her arms, she didn't seem to believe her but no one else was speaking up. "Miss Morgan, anything you care to share with the rest of the class?"

Sasha shrank in on herself when she realized everyone was looking at her and held out her wrist. "Sorry, the alarm on my watch just went off. I've tried shutting it off so it would quit going off at random but it's an old watch so I don't remember how and I don't have the instructions anymore,"

Ms. Blu still didn't believe her but didn't want to dwell on the subject anymore. "Alright… Now class, if you would please return your attention to the board and we can continue our discussion on…"

After class, Cody met up with Sasha in the hall. "Hey, Sasha, about what happened back there, you didn't have to do that… thanks,"

Sasha jumped when she realized he was talking to her but smiled at him and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "No problem,"

Cody noticed that when she reached up her sleeve fell down, revealing a bruise on the girl's hand. "Whoa, what happened to your hand?"

Sasha looked at her hand, for about a second she almost looked scared before her expression became cold and unreadable, and pulled her sleeve back down over her hand. "I… uh… got it caught in a door last night,"

Cody grabbed her wrist and carefully pulled her sleeve back to have a look. "Ouch, that looks like it must have hurt. Did you put ice on it?"

Sasha looked away and shook her head "Didn't have any,"

Cody looked at her strangely '_Didn't have any ice? Anyone with a freezer should have something cold for this' _"Maybe you should go to the nurse and have her look at it,"

Sasha shook her head quickly. "I'll be ok, I've had worse,"

Cody's eyes widened. "When?"

Sasha smirked at him "I used to live on a farm with 1500 pound horses running around. Well, two of them were Clydesdale mix so they were a bit heavier and one was an Arabian so he was lighter but you get the idea. Can you imagine what being kicked or stepped on by one of them must be like?"

Cody winced, that didn't sound like it felt good at all. "Um… I'll take your word for it,"

Sasha looked at him like she wanted to say something else but instead tossed her head in the direction of down the hall. "Come on, we're going to be late for class,"

Cody waited for Frankie to catch up to them and followed Sasha as she walked down the hall.

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After an hour or so of searching the rescue team found the five campers that were lost and of those five, three of them needed medical treatment.

One had hypothermia and a sprained ankle from falling off a rock ledge and into a river, another also got hypothermia from trying to swim after him and the third dislocated their shoulder trying to pull them out and would have been pulled in with them had the other two not held onto him.

The other two were fine and were taken into town to meet their friends at the hospital after they were air lifted there by Blades and Dani.

Turns out Dani knew the one that had dislocated his shoulder and she blushed the entire way there.

After they dropped the campers off and it was just him and Dani, Blades questioned his human partner about this. "Dani, are you okay? You were acting really weird just now, and your face was red like you have a fever. Oh, Primus, _do_ you have a fever?"

Dani rubbed her face and shook her head. "No Blades, I don't have a fever,"

Blades let out a sigh of relief. "That's good," the holographic image of his face looked up at her. "So why were you acting so different, especially around that guy with the hurt shoulder?"

Dani blushed again "Who, Taylor? I just wanted to make sure he was okay,"

Kade cut in on the conversation, he had been eavesdropping through the comm.s :Yeah, because she _liiikes _him.: he said the word "like" in an obnoxious sing-song voice.

Dani narrowed her eyes, wishing she could glare at her brother, or better yet slap him. "That's not what was going on at all, Kade,"

Kade snickered :Whatever you say, little sis.:

Blades also snickered and started singing "_Dani and Taylor, sittin' in a…"_

Dani swatted his console to get him to stop.

"Ow."

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After they got back to the firehouse, Blades decided to test out his holoform some more. After making it look human he went for a walk in the town—after making sure to let the Chase and Heatwave know where he was—to see if anyone could tell he wasn't human.

When Blades passed by a shop window he jumped slightly, not recognizing himself; his holoform now looked like a tall young man with orange-blonde hair that was spiked up on the sides with amber colored eyes and pale skin wearing a white sleeveless button up shirt over a long sleeve orange shirt with pale blue jeans and white sneakers.

He quickly ran his fingers through his hair, making sure it looked good, or at least looked _human._ He still didn't know much about human styles so he just shrugged and left it as it was, continuing his walk.

Blades looked around at his surroundings, somehow feeling small next to all of the buildings and the fenced-in trees that dotted the sides of the street in between the light posts that he was usually close to the same height as.

'_Everything looks so different at this size. Best of all, I don't have to pretend to be someone's vehicle or a piece of equipment to blend in when I'm like this,'_

The Rescue Bot in holoform was so busy looking around he forgot to watch where he was going and bumped into someone, who dropped a small black case they had been holding and it clattered on the ground.

Blades realized his blunder and stooped down to pick it up for them while apologizing profusely "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I should pay more attention,"

But to his surprise the person he had just bumped into was also crouching to grab the item they had dropped. "No I'm sorry, that was my fault,"

'_Where have I heard that voice before?' _Blades looked up and realized he had just bumped into the girl that had come up to him and started talking to him as though she was trying to be friends the day before. "Hey, aren't you that new girl?"

The girl leaned away from him with wide eyes, reminding Blades of a frightened cat, before slowly reaching for her case she had dropped when Blades held it out for her. "I almost forgot how fast word travels in small towns like this,"

The two of them stood up and the girl looked at up at him, almost having to lean back since his holoform was about six feet tall. "Well, since you seem to know who I am, it's only fair I know your name,"

Blades did a quick search on the internet to find a name that sounded human but was close enough to his real designation that it would be easy to remember. "I'm… Blake," he stiffly held out his hand, knowing from what they had learned from Cody humans usually shook hands when they met someone new. Cybertronians did too but not nearly as often.

The girl switched her case to her other hand to firmly grasp Blades' "Sasha,"

Blades realized he was shaking her hand more than necessary and let go. "Nice to meet you, Sasha. I hope I didn't damage your… um…" he looked at the case to try to get a hint of what might have been inside.

Sasha noticed his confusion and finished his sentence. "Violin, don't worry, this case has extra padding in it," she noticed the crossing light had changed from "Don't Walk" to "Walk" and stepped off the curb. "I'd better go, nice meeting you,"

Blades waved "Nice meeting you too,"

He started to walk away when he got a call on his comm. link and remotely accessed said comm. link as he altered part of his holoform to make it look like he was talking on a cell phone. "Hello?"

Dani's voice came on. :Blades, Heatwave just said you were out in your holoform. Sorry to interrupt your walk but you need to come back to base, we've got patrol in five minutes.:

Blades sighed '_Duty calls…' _"Alright, I'll be right there," he waited until she disconnected the call in case there was something else she needed to tell him and put his hands in his pockets as he turned around and started the trek back to the fire house.

Then an idea struck him. '_Hmm, I wonder how fast these holoforms are…' _ a grin split his face as he prepared to sprint and suddenly everything around him was a blur as he ran, leaving confused people and a few stray papers fluttering in the breeze in his wake.

Dani hung up the call and went to get her helmet so she was ready when Blades' holoform got back. When she turned around there was suddenly a stranger with orange hair standing behind her.

She screamed and swung her fist at him.

Blades dodged and held up his hands in surrender. "Whoa, Dani it's me. You called, remember?"

Dani took a deep breath to calm herself and let it out and he did the same before saying "Why is it that whenever I use my holoform around you, you try to kill me?"

Dani put her helmet on her head. "Sorry, Blades I didn't recognize you,"

Blades holoform disappeared and he transformed into robot mode. "Fine, fine, I see how it is… you don't like me because I don't like to fly as much as you do. Why couldn't there have been a race car with the vehicles they had us scan? I could have worked with that,"

He turned and walked towards the med. bay. "Just let me check on Boulder before we go,"

Dani held up a finger and said. "Graham already did. He wanted me to tell you that the sedatives wore off while you were out and that's he's running diagnostics on Boulder's shoulder. Everything checks out but we want to make absolutely sure he's healed before he goes back to work,"

Blades sighed, he was running out of excuses to get out of flying, and went over to the lift onto the roof. "Come on, let's go,"

Dani took the human elevator up to the roof and met him out on the helicopter pad where he transformed into a helicopter.

Blades opened his canopy to let his human partner into the cockpit and once it was closed they both ran their pre-flight checks.

While Blades prepared to take off, Dani spoke with him through the microphone in her helmet so he could hear her over the spinning rotors. "Blades, what was that you said before about a race car?"

Blades sighed and his holographic face looked up at her from his console. "Did Cody, or me or one of the others, ever tell you I wasn't always a helicopter?"

Dani thought for a moment "Cody might have mentioned that…" '_I just wasn't paying attention when he did,'_ she thought guiltily

Blades nodded. "Well he was right, I wasn't always a helicopter. Heck, I wasn't always a _Rescue bot _even,"

Dani looked at Blades; this was news for her. "What did you do before you were a rescue bot?"

Blades smiled shyly but pride shone in his optics. "I was a Speedster, one of the best racers in my circuit back on Cyberton. I also did a few street races on the side and a few odd courier jobs when I didn't have any races,"

Dani smiled, but one question came to mind. "What made you want to become a Rescue Bot?"

Blades looked away in shame. "Well, like I said, I did a few street races. One went wrong and I got into an accident,"

Dani gasped. "Oh my God,"

Blades continued. "…and since that wall I crashed into was public property and I didn't get away before the Enforcers showed up I got community service. In addition to fixing to wall I crashed into they had me scrubbing graffiti off of the buildings. It wasn't much since Tyger Pax was a pretty nice town but still,"

"So after you finished your community service you became a rescue bot?"

"I'm getting there, be patient," Blades continued his story.

"Anyway, one day when I was scrubbing graffiti a few street racers went by, the area was pretty popular for street races, and I stopped to watch, wishing I could join in. But then one of the racers took a corner too sharp and skidded out of control and knocked over a stack of crates. A few bots went over to see if the racer was ok but then they started freaking out. I didn't know why for sure at first, the racer seemed ok, but then somebot shouted 'Somebot get some help! There's a Youngling under the crates!'"

Dani wasn't quite sure what "youngling" meant. "A Youngling?"

Blades nodded. "Yeah, in human years he would have been… mmm… around Cody's age, maybe a little younger,"

Dani gasped, trying not to picture what would have happened if a human child at that age had been buried under crates like that.

Blades continued the story. "I heard someone say that they were calling the Youngling's Creators and a medic but everybody was too busy staring at the pile of crates in shock to get them off of him so I ran over and dug him out myself. He wasn't responding to I did some of the first aid procedures they taught us at the track in case one of us killed our engines,"

"You mean like CPR for Cybertronians?" Dani asked.

Blades thought for a moment and the holographic image of his face titled with a shrug. "Yeah, I guess you can think about it like that. Anyway, after a few breems the kid came to and his Creators, one of them actually _was _the medic they ended up calling, got there and well, seeing that Youngling with his Creators after saving him from being buried alive just felt… good,"

Dani smiled "So you became a Rescue Bot,"

Blades nodded. "I gave up street racing for good and when I finished my community service I put in an _application _to join the Rescue Bots. I went to the Circuit less and less and when my application finally went through I quit going altogether and started my training to become a Rescue Bot,"

Dani leaned back in her seat, letting the information she had just been told sink in. "Wow, Blades, I knew you were more than meets the eye but you've got a criminal record and everything,"

Blades gawked "I do not have a _criminal record_… they were only able to catch me that one time," he remembered a detail he forgot to mention and smiled. "Want to hear the funny part?"

Dani looked at him incredulously. "There's a funny part?"

Blades nodded "As it turns out the Youngling I saved was the same one that made me have my accident in the first place because I swerved to miss him when he ran out into the street,"

Dani thought for a moment. "So, because of that kid you became a Rescue bot?"

"Yep"

Dani thought for a moment "Cool,"

They were quiet as they continued their patrol before Blades spoke up. "So… what made you want to be a helicopter pilot?"

Dani blushed. "Well, when I was a little kid I always wanted to be able to fly. Like a bird or a super hero. Then one time when I was in first grade a local helicopter pilot came to the school and gave my class helicopter rides. It was so cool. As soon as I was back on the ground the first thing I said was 'When I grow up I wanna fly a helicopter!'"

Blades laughed nervously. "Living the dream,"

Dani smiled and nodded. "Oh yeah, but when I got older I found out that people don't just fly helicopters for a living so it was either join the military or join a Search-and-Rescue team… like mom,"

Blades looked up at her somberly. "You miss her,"

Dani nodded and Blades gently tightened the safety belts around her in an attempt at a hug. "What happened?"

Dani stiffened, she didn't like to talk about it but she trusted Blades. "Like I said, she was part of the Search-and-Rescue team, but she drove an ambulance not a helicopter. One day she was helping someone that had spun out on an icy road and crashed. While she was treating him on site another car came around the corner and hit her,"

Blades gasped. "Primus, I'm so sorry Dani. Did they ever find out who did it?"

Dani shook her head. "No, it was a hit and run,"

Blades pouted "Aft-hats, could've at least made sure she was ok,"

They were quiet for a moment longer until Dani realized that her greatest tragedy was losing her mom and, while that sucked for her and her family, Blades had literally lost his entire world and she never gave it a second thought while he consoled her about her own problem.

She gently rubbed his control panel and asked. "What was Cybertron like?"

Blades was surprised by this; usually it was Cody or Graham—and Frankie and Doc Greene now that they knew—that were curious about Cybertron.

Blades thought for a moment, sifting through his memory banks to find memories of home that were least likely to make him too homesick. "Cybertron was… incredible. Don't get me wrong Earth is awesome too and in some ways they are a lot alike but… Cybertron will always be home,"

The solemn look on his face perked up when he remembered something. "I think we still have some of the holovids from back in the day in our archives from our ship, if you want to watch them. 'Cause honestly it will take too long to describe it, mostly because if I describe I just know I won't do it justice,"

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When they got back to the firehouse Dani climbed out of her partner's alt. mode looked up at Blades as he transformed. "It's almost too bad you can't go back to your old alt. mode, Blades. I'd love to see you in action with it,"

Chief Burns and Chase were on their way out to for their own patrol, when the latter heard what Dani just said he crossed his arm-servos and scowled. "Absolutely not,"

Chief Burns looked at Dani and each of the bots. "Am I missing something here?"

Dani pointed her thumb up at Blades. "Blades was just telling me he used to be a racer back on Cybertron before he became a Rescue bot. I just thought it would be cool to see, from the sounds of things he was pretty good when kids didn't run out in front of him,"

Chase clenched his fists at his sides. "It took us three Earth days to catch him. Three. Earth. Days!" he held up his digits for emphasis. "And I lost track of all of the times he managed to lose the Enforcer personnel that were trying to tail him,"

Dani waved Chase off. "I'm sure he held back after he joined the Rescue Bots,"

Chase transformed "That _was _after he joined the Rescue bots,"

He didn't say anything more so Chief Burns got into his alt. mode and fastened his seat belt. "While it would be impressive to see what a Cybertronian alt. mode can do, I'm afraid Chase is right. Even if Blades did get his wheels back he can't race on the streets, it would have to be on a racetrack,"

Blades sighed sadly. "Not that there was any chances of that happening anyway,"

Blades went to check on Boulder and Dani went upstairs while Chase and Chief Burns pulled out of the garage.

Once they were out of the driveway, Chief Burns said. "Sounds like you were speaking from experience back there,"

Chase sighed and the holographic face on his screen nodded. "Cybertron had its speeders just as much as Earth does. Whenever a street race passed through the sector we were assigned to Blades always offered to help bring the delinquents under control. Problem was he sometimes forget he supposed to be trying to stop the race, not win it,"

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The next day, Blades went for another walk in his holoform, enjoying the fact he could be out of the base for something other than an emergency or giving in to Dani's want to fly.

Not that he didn't like flying with Dani, he just still had his issues with heights and his controls and gears always took a beating when she was peevish about something.

When Blades got to the park when he heard music playing and looked around to locate the source. '_Primus, that's beautiful. Where's it coming from?' _

The Rescue Bot finally located the source, a small human sitting on a park bench wearing a denim jacket and a grey hood playing a violin or a fiddle; he had seen people play them on T.V. but he didn't know what the difference was between the two.

When Blades moved loser he noticed that whoever was playing must have been messing up because they kept stopping abruptly with a growl of frustration and then playing the same part over again.

At first he wasn't able to identify the musician because they had the hood of the sweatshirt they were wearing under their jacket up but after a few minutes of listening and watching them play Blades recognized them. "That's beautiful,"

The violinist jumped and looked at him, revealing the girl he had met the day before. At first she was afraid but relaxed slightly when she realized he wasn't a threat. "Oh hey, Blake right?"

Blades nodded and the girl quickly said "Did you want to sit here? Here, let me move my stuff," Sasha frantically started moving the items she had set on the bench—sheet music and her violin case—and put them duffle bag that sat on the ground at her feet.

Blades considered for a moment as he looked around and walked around the bench to sit next to her but then he saw she was putting away her violin and realized she was packing away her stuff to leave. "Oh, no, you're fine. I just wanted to hear you play but if I'm bothering you I could just leave,"

Sasha looked at him with confusion and he looked away shyly. "You're really good,"

She didn't move so Blades asked "What song was that?"

Sasha bit her lip before mumbling something he couldn't catch. "I'm sorry, didn't quite catch that,"

"'Bottom of your soul' by Toto. I printed the sheet music off the internet and have been learning to play it for music class. Happy?"

Blades smiled "Very," he noticed she was withdrawn. '_Whoa, never thought I'd meet someone as shy as me,' _ "Don't mind me, if you want to keep practicing, go ahead,"

Sasha hesitated before getting out her violin back out and propping her sheet music against her bag and holding it in place with her feet.

She got ready to play but looked at Blades out the corner of her eye. "Pardon my bow, I don't want to jab you on accident,"

Blades realized the stick in her hand, the bow, had to come in his direction for her to play and leaned back. "Ok,"

Blades watched as the violinist started to play. As he listened he looked up the song on the internet. As he read the lyrics he came to the conclusion that this was a very sad song and…for some reason… he liked it.

The holoform said nothing in favor of hearing the song and when she stopped he was about ready to cry and clapped wildly. "Bravo, bravo, encore,"

Sasha shook her head, also looking near tears. "That wasn't the whole song, Blake. I just can't get to seem to get it right," she slammed the hand holding the bow into her leg like she was trying to stab herself with it.

Blades looked at the sheet music she was using. It did look complicated… then again he had no idea how to read sheet music, let alone the human kind. He smiled at her. "Don't worry, you'll get it,"

Sasha smiled "Thanks,"

Blades smiled back but then he got a call on his comm. link and the buzzing that alerted him of that was audible. "Uh, could you excuse me for a moment?"

Sasha nodded so he stood up and altered his holoform so it looked like he had taken a cell phone out of his pocket and answered it. "Hello?"

Hetwave's voice sounded irritated. :Blades, sorry to interrupt whatever it is you're doing but we've got an _emergency,_ so if you don't mind…:

Bldes sighed. "Be right there," he "hung up" the holographic cell phone and looked at Sasha. "Um, I'd better go. Just got a call, apparently there's an emergency,"

Sasha's eyes widened "Everything ok?"

Blades shrugged "Not sure, I'll find out when I get to the firehouse,"

The girl's eyes widened further. "You work at the firehouse? Are you a fireman?"

Blades shook his head "No I'm…" he quickly thought of a cover since he couldn't tell her he was a Rescue Bot. "Part of the Search-and-Rescue team. Remember that helicopter that was parked outside the school the other day? I saw you looking at it,"

The girl blushed "Oh yeah… wait that was yours?"

'_Well, technically I'm not lying,' _Blades nodded.

Sasha smiled and gave him the same look she did when she was looking at his alt. mode. "COOL!"

Blades smiled and waved as he walked away. "See you around,"

Sasha waved back "Yeah… see you," as soon as he was gone she packed away all of her stuff and walked away.

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When Chief Burns got to the police station that day he found his deputy, Barney, talking to a very distraught looking couple he had never seen before.

The woman was of average height with red hair and blue eyes wearing a yellow button up sweater over a white shirt with a purple skirt and black high heels while the man was slightly taller than she was and had dark hair with blue eyes and was wearing dark cargo pants and a navy blue suede jacket.

Chief Burns cleared his throat to get their attention and said. "What seems to be the problem here?"

Barney looked at Chief Burns and said. "Well hi-yah, Chief, these folks came in and told me they had a missing child. Would you happen to know who we'd call about that?"

Chief Burns took a deep breath and sighed. '_That would be us.' _ He dismissed the deputy. "I got this one, Barney. If you folks would come with me,"

He vaguely heard Barney say "Well, thanks Chief," as he led the couple into his office and closed the door behind him. "Sorry about that. We recently had some staff cuts and he's a little confused as to who's left, although I actually take care of this sort of thing anyway,"

Chief Burns waved his hand to indicate the two chairs situated in front of his desk as he circled around it. "Why don't you folks have a seat? I just need to get a form we need to fill out for information and we can get started,"

The couple sat down in the chairs across from Chief Burns as he grabbed a file and removed a form from it and put the file back in its place before closing the drawer and opening another to get an empty tan folder to keep the paper in once it was filled out.

Chief Burns grabbed a pen out of the cup on his desk and clicked. "Now then, what can you tell me about your missing child?"

The couple looked at each other nervously before the man spoke. "She's actually not our child. We're her foster parents,"

Chief Burns made a note of that; it wasn't uncommon for children in foster care to run away from their foster homes and this fact might help somehow.

The woman looked at him almost pleadingly. "Her name is Sasha, Sasha Morgan. She has black hair and hazel eyes, about twelve years old. We haven't had her for very long but she is very special to us,"

Chief Burns that jotted down and asked a few more questions. "When was the last time you saw her?"

"Yesterday evening. She was working on her homework at the kitchen table and she went upstairs when we got home,"

Chief Burns jotted that down as well. "What was she last seen wearing?"

The couple looked at each other and the woman answered. "We're not exactly sure,"

When Chief Burns looked up at them the man clarified. "We woke up this morning and found a note saying she left early for school. We didn't actually see her. Also when we both came home from work we found that she had taken some of her belongings with her. Even if we had seen her that morning she could have changed her clothes since then,"

Chief Burns simply wrote "Unknown" in that space on the missing child report form. "Any recent photographs we can use to identify her?"

The woman pulled a wallet sized photo out of her purse. "We took this the day we got her,"

Chief Burns took the photograph and looked at it before setting it next to the form he was filling out. "Alright, can you think of any possible leads as to where she might be?"

The woman shook her head. "No, we just moved here a few days ago. I'm not sure is she knows where anything even is. Besides the school, I mean, and we already looked there,"

The Police Chief nodded and asked them a few more questions, including how they might be able to reach them if they find anything.

The man asked to write their names and contact information himself so Chief Burns allowed it, seeing nothing wrong with that.

When Chief Burns got the paper and his pen back he saw that the man had given him their address, home phone and his work phone number. Chief Burns looked at the woman. "And you?"

The woman smiled politely. "The same as him,"

Chief Burns started to write but stopped when he noticed something about what they had said. "You two work at the same place?"

The man scowled in a "Do you think this is a joke?" manner and the woman shook her head. "No, I'm a stay-at-home housewife,"

Chief Burns looked at the two of them, not letting any of the suspicion he was feeling creep onto his face. "Didn't you say you both got home from work last night when you saw Sasha last?"

The couple seemed to realize their story had a plot hole and the woman laughed. "Oh that. Yes, _he _came home from work but I had to run to the store for… something, I can't quite remember what. Anyway I met up with him when I was walking home so we rode together the rest of the way,"

Chief Burns saw how that would make sense, although the slight pause when she said she went to the store seemed off, but he shrugged and assumed that she was simply trying to remember what she had gone to the store for in the first place and let it slide.

Chief Burns looked over the form to make sure everything was filled out. "Ok, that should cover it. We'll be sure to call you if anything comes up, Mr. and Mrs. …" he looked at the name he had been given. "Thamesson,"

Mr. Thamesson frowned "Thamesson, it's pronounced 'Tems-son',"

Chief Burns nodded "Sorry, Thamesson,"

Mrs. Thamesson smiled at him as she hooked her arms into her husband's "Thank you Chief Burns, I just hope we find her,"

Chief Burns nodded at the couple as they stood up from their chairs. "So, do I," Before they left they reminded him to call if he found anything out and he assured them he would.

Once they were gone Chief Burns looked at the name of the missing child he had been asked to find. Sasha Morgan, age thirteen, black hair and hazel eyes. '_This is that new girl in Cody's class. Why would she run away?' _

He knew he shouldn't be involving his own children in cases like this but Cody was friends with Sasha so there was a chance he would know where she might be.

Chief Burns placed the papers, along with the picture the Thamessons had given him, into a folder and went out to where Chase was parked and got in on the driver's side.

The holographic image of the Rescue bot's face appeared on the screen on his console. "Where to, sir?"

Chief Burns fastened his seat belt. "Head for home, Chase, I've got a few questions for Cody,"

Chase pulled out of the parking spot he was in and drove away from the station. "Is Cody in trouble?"

Chief Burns shook his head. "No, Cody isn't in trouble. One of his classmates was just reported missing, I was going to see if there was a chance he might know where she is,"

Chase was curious. "Might I ask who this classmate is in the event we see her on the way to the firehouse?"

"Actually, Cody introduced her to us a while back. Her name is Sasha," Chief Burns opened the file he had on the girl. "Full name, Sasha Morgan…"

Chase continued. "Dark hair, hazel eyes, approximately the same height as Cody although one and a half inches shorter, with an unusual and illogical fear of law enforcement officers,"

Chief glanced down at the console then up at the road. "I don't know, Chase, you guys do take a little getting used to,"

Chase looked up him. "If you are implying that it was myself and the other Rescue Bots she was wary of I'm afraid I will have to disagree with you. If that were the case she would not have allowed Heatwave to hold her in his servo after he caught her when she fell out of that tree saving Mrs. Neederlanders wayward pet feline,"

Chief Burns said nothing more. '_Something's going on here, and I intend to find out what,'_

* * *

_**A.N.: Oh no, what now? Quick shout out to the people that reviewed and/or added; AriaCyndicate, MusicalPrime, VetorSigma101, NightFury97**_


	5. Chapter 5

Dents and Bruises

Rated T for good reasons; including language, slash, mentions of slash, child abuse and anything else I might have missed.

Talking:

"English or other Earth language"

"_**Cybertronian"**_

'_Thoughts'_

:Comm. Links:

(Bond talk)

"_Recordings or telephone conversations"_

_**(Bumblebee talking)**_

_Flashback or change of time or place_

Time changes:

Nano-klick=1/2 a klik. Klik= less than a second. Breem (cybertronian minute) = 8 minutes. Cycle=hour. Joor (Cybertronian hour) = 6 hours. Solar cycle=day. Megacycle= 1 week. Orn= 13 days. Groon= 1 month. Deca-orn = 3 months. Stellar cycle= 1 year. Vorn=83 years.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except my OC's or any original ideas I patched in to fill in any blanks left by the show, if you recognize it from somewhere else it's probably not mine.

* * *

When they got home, Chief Burns sought out Cody and found him in the bot's med. bay looking through books about Earth with Boulder, who was now wide awake, to keep the mech company.

"Cody?"

Cody looked at his dad and saw he was beckoning him over. He set down the book he was reading and climbed down the ladder that was propped up against the side of the med. berth.

"Yeah dad?"

Chief Burns asked him "Have you heard anything from your friend Sasha lately?"

Cody looked up at his father and thought a moment. "I saw her at school today. Why?"

Chief Burns crossed his arms. "Her folks just reported her missing at the station. Did she say or do anything unusual at school today?"

Cody racked his brain for anything out of the ordinary. "Well, she was late for lunch because she had a music lesson that ran late… and when we asked if she wanted to hang out with me and Frankie after school she got really nervous and said she had something she had to do but wouldn't say what it was,"

Chief Burns nodded "Thanks Cody," he turned on his comm. link. "Everyone back to the firehouse, we have a situation on our hands,"

He cut off the connection and Cody trotted out of the room. "I'm going to call Frankie and see if she's seen her,"

Chief Burns looked up at Boulder who looked like he was feeling left out. "How are you feeling, Boulder?"

Boulder smiled. "Better, shoulder's a bit stiff but I can work out the kinks," he sat up and started to climb off the med. berth. "Need any help finding this Sasha girl?"

Chiefs Burns held up his hands. "Easy, Boulder, you just had surgery on part of your nervous system. If we absolutely need all hands on deck we'll let you back on duty with restrictions. If not…"

Boulder hung his helm, feeling useless but understanding. "I understand,"

When everyone else got back they all met in the main part of the bunker and Chief Burns raised his voice.

"Alright, everyone, we've just got a report for a missing person," He opened the file and read off the information on it.

" Name:Sasha Morgan. Hazel eyes and dark hair. From what they told us at the station it sounds like she ran away from home and since she and her folks just moved to town and aren't too familiar with the area we don't really have any leads as to where she might be other than the act that Cody and Frankie saw her at school today whereas her folks haven't seen her since yesterday evening,"

He held up the photo graph he had been given. "This is a photograph of her. Anyone recall seeing her on their rounds today?"

The bots and the Burnses all looked at the photo and Blades piped up. "Hey, I just saw her a few minutes ago,"

Heatwave looked at him. "And you wait to tell us this now?"

Blades crossed his arm-servos and turned away so he was looking over his shoulder at Heatwave. "Well, I didn't know we were supposed to be looking for her until now,"

Chief Burns waved his hands. "Alright, alright, let's focus here. Blades, where and when did you see her?"

Blades fiddled with his digits. "In the park,"

Kade nodded "Runaways always end up at the park at some point,"

Chief starting assigning search sectors. "Dani, Blades, you two check the park and the surrounding area. Chase and I will search downtown. Heatwave, Kade, you two check the west side,"

"Graham and I can check the east side," Boulder volunteered but Blades started pushing him towards the med. bay.

"Oh no, you're going right back to bed, mister,"

Graham watched his partner be dragged away and said. "I can search the east side by myself,"

Cody raised his hand "I'll help,"

Kade ruffled Cody's hair. "Nice try squirt. Why don't you leave this to the grown-ups?"

Chief Burns shook his head. "No Cody has a point. He actually knows Sasha so he has better chances of finding her and this way Graham isn't alone,"

Dani realized something. "But if Cody goes with Graham who's going to keep an eye on the command center?"

"I can," they looked over at the chair at the monitors and saw it spin around to see Boulders holoform sitting in it wearing a gray muscle shirt and bandages on his torso and shoulder.

"Ok, now that that's settled, let's go," they all went up to the garage and Chief Burns looked out the window. "Everyone get your raincoats. It looks like it's going to start raining,"

Kade scoffed as he climbed into Heatwave's cab. "Pfft, no it isn't. The weather report on T.V. said it's just going to be cloudy,"

Dani rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah, and Huxeley Prescott is _so _honest about what he says on the news,"

Kade smirked "How much do you want to bet it doesn't rain tonight?"

Graham threw on his raincoat, just in case. "Loser has to do the winners chores for a week?"

"Deal"

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_An hour later_

Cody and Graham slogged through rain water as it came down on them in torrents, both looking around for any signs of the missing girl and occasionally calling her name.

Graham looked around and activated his comm. link. "Pay up, Kade,"

Kade's voice came out in a near whine. :Hey no fair, we didn't shake on it.:

When Cody and Graham passed an alley on Main Street they heard the sounds of someone crying.

"Hey Graham, do you hear that? It sounds like someone crying,"

Graham nodded. "Come on, let's go check it out,"

They followed the sound to investigate and located the source of the sound behind the dumpster. "Sounds like whoever it is are behind here," Graham went over and peered behind the dumpster.

Sure enough, there was Sasha, crying into her knees. He smiled "Hey, Sasha, right?"

Sasha looked up at him and then scooted away from him as far as the small space would allow.

Graham realized he had startled her. "Easy, I'm not going to hurt you,"

Cody came around to look behind the dumpster and smiled when he saw his friend. "Sasha, are you okay?"

Sasha sniffed and wiped her eyes. "No,"

Graham called the others to tell them they had found Sasha and where they were while Cody tried to coax her out. "Why are you hiding behind a dumpster?"

Sasha curled in on herself. "Not like I have anyplace better to be,"

When the others arrived, Graham moved so Chief Burns could kneel down next to the opening between the alley wall and the dumpster.

"Come on out, Sasha" he coaxed. "We're here to take you home. Your parents are looking for you,"

Sasha snarled at him "The Thamessons aren't my parents! They don't even care about me, they just want me back because the government will stop sending them checks if I'm not with them,"

The bots were confused so Chief Burns clarified. "She's in foster care,"

Heatwave looked at him "Foster care?"

Graham looked up at him and explained. "Foster care is when the government takes kids who need a home and gives them to families that are willing to look after them,"

Chase looked down at him his expression unreadable. "We know, there were similar programs on Cybertron as well,"

Blades crept over to the dumpster and peered over it, when he did he keened quietly at the sight of the little girl hiding from the Chief as though he were a grizzly bear. "Poor girl,"

Sasha jumped and craned her neck to look up at the top of the dumpster, luckily Blades pulled his helm back so she didn't see him but he froze when she asked. "Blake, is that you out there?"

Blades sheepishly looked around at the others while everyone looked at him. Dani put her hands on her hips and mouthed. "'Blake'?"

Blades shrugged and mouthed the words "I'll explain later," as he activated his holoform and went around the side of the dumpster. "Hey, Sasha, why don't you come out of there and we can… uh… talk this out?"

Cody added his own pleading. "Yeah, please?"

Sasha snorted. "Cut the crap, you guys. I know what you guys are trying to do,"

Kade didn't like the accusatory tone the girl was using and didn't want to be out in the rain any more than he had to. "This is getting us nowhere fast," he looked up at Heatwave and gestured towards the dumpster. "Think you can move it out of the way?"

Heatwave rolled his optics. "Pfft, humans, always needing a bot to bail them out," he pulled the dumpster aside with one servo, leaving the girl exposed and backed against the wall.

Chief Burns moved in closer and crouched next to her to appear less threatening when she flinched away from him. "Not all foster families are like that, I'm sure they care about you very much,"

Sasha snorted and rolled her eyes, grumbling something none of them caught.

Chief Burns just watched her until her shoulders dropped submissively and she reached behind her to grab her backpack and a violin case, which she put into the backpack after moving some items around.

He smiled and stood back to give her room, but to his surprise Sasha lunged for the opening this left and rolled across the ground until she was past them and ran out of the alley.

Kade and Graham both tried to block her path but she ran past them and ducked under Blades' servo when he sluggishly tried to reach for her; his reaction time for his real body was slow to none while his holoform was active so he deactivated it.

Chase ran after her saying in a "robotic" monotone. "Halt, citizen!"

Sasha just ran faster. "I can't…"

Heatwave caught up and roughly grabbed her in both servos and lifted her off the ground.

To his surprise the girl didn't scream but she struggled, unlike last time she was that close to him.

Sasha growled with frustration and looked down at the ground. "Please… don't take me back there,"

Heatwave was confused by this and almost blew their cover—again—to ask her what she meant by that but Chase carefully extracted the girl from Heatwave's grasp and emotionlessly reprimanded her.

"Evasion of an officer is a criminal misdemeanor,"

Sasha's eyes widened and she looked down at Chief Burns. "Is he saying I could get arrested for running from a cop?"

Chief Burns shook his head. "No, he's saying it just gets into more trouble than you already are," he looked at the others. "You guys better head for home and get out of this rain. Chase and I will be doing the same as soon as we get our little runaway home,"

Chase transformed into his alt. mode so that Sasha was in the back seat while Heatwave and Blades also transformed.

Cody saw Sasha trying to open Chase's door and stepped closer to see what was wrong.

Sasha saw him and leaned against Chase's window, looking at Cody like she was trying to tell him something and mouthed the words "Cody… please…"

Cody tilted his head at her, wondering what she was trying to say. Sasha seemed to give up when she realized he wasn't getting the message and fall back against Chase's seat.

Chase noticed this and asked through the radio. "Human Youth: do you require anything?"

Sasha glanced at his dashboard and then looked down, clutching her bag tightly. "Um, no thank you…" she looked hopeful as a wry smile tugged on the corners of her mouth. "Although, if you let me go I would be eternally grateful,"

"Request denied,"

The girl seemed to wilt and fiddled with the zipper on her bag. "Worth a shot,"

Chief Burns sat in the driver's seat and buckled himself in before driving away, or at least _pretending _he was driving. "So, Sasha, where do you live?"

Sasha looked up at the rain splattered window. "About fifteen, twenty minutes outside of Lexington, Kentucky,"

Chief Burns looked at her in his rearview mirror when he noticed she had given him what he assumed was her old address. '_Stubborn girl…' _he mused, not a rude stubborn but more of a determined stubborn, like Cody was sometimes.

He took out the file he had gotten at the station and looked at the address included in the contact information. "Well, it's a good thing your foster parents gave us their address when they reported you missing,"

Sasha frowned and locked her gaze on the window as she leaned against the door.

After a few minutes of riding in relative silence, the only sounds being Chase's engine and the sounds of rain, Chief Burns glanced back at the occupant of the back seat of his car. "How are you holding up back there, Sasha?"

Sasha's expression didn't change as she said quietly. "Didn't think they would go to the cops…"

Chief Burns frowned. "Running away is a serious business, young lady. They were just looking out for you,"

The girl glared at him for a brief moment before taking out a beat up looking iPod and putting in ear buds to listen to music as she turned it on.

After making sure the girl wasn't listening anymore, Chase whispered "Sir, you are aware we are en route to Canyon Road, are you not?"

Chief Burns nodded and kept his eyes on the road to keep up the pretense he was driving. "Yeah, the address we were given was for that old house on Canyon road. I heard rumors that someone bought it recently and if the Thamesson's just moved here that would make sense,"

Remembering why Chase would ask that, Chief Burns smiled at the console. "Don't worry Chase, the order for you guys not to go past there is no longer in affect and we're not going to Griffin Crest anyway so you should be safe,"

Soon enough, they found Canyon Road and the old house on it and Chase parked in the driveway next to a gray Ford Taurus.

Chief Burns got out and came around to open the door for Sasha; both out of courtesy and to make sure she didn't run as soon as the door opened.

Sure enough, like a racehorse out of the starting gate, Sasha launched herself out of the vehicle as soon as she saw an opening.

Unfortunately Chief Burns was right there to catch her by the arm and keep her from running.

Chief Burns walked up to the house and up the porch steps with Sasha and knocked on the door.

Sasha stiffened and tried to pull away but the Police Chief kept a firm grip on his arm so she settled for hiding behind him when the door opened bathing the porch and part of the yard beyond in light from the house.

Mrs. Thamesson stood in the doorway in a pale blue night gown pulling a robe around herself. "Chief Burns, did you find…" she saw Sasha trying to hide behind Chief Burns and shouted for her husband with a slight screech.

"TOM! GET DOWN HERE!"

They heard footsteps from within the house and Mr. Thamesson was at his wife's side a moment later. "What is it?"

Mrs. Thamesson brushed past Chief Burns to hug Sasha, who stood there stiffly.

Mr. Thamesson looked surprised but recollected himself as he reached out and took Sasha's bag from her, grabbing the girl's wrist and pulling it from her grasp when she didn't let go.

"Thank you for finding her, Chief Burns,"

Mrs. Thamesson smiled at him like a little girl that was just given a puppy for her birthday. "Yes, thank you so much,"

"It was no trouble at all," Chief Burns smiled at them but his heart wasn't really in it; something didn't sit right with him about the situation.

While the couple that was hugging their foster child seemed happy and relieved to have her back, Sasha glanced up at them and looked at Chief Burns and stared at him.

While her eyes held no anger or accusation, they so were full of sadness, fear, betrayal and pain that they seemed to ask him "_Why?"_

He didn't have time to dwell on this as the Thamessons quickly thanked him for finding Sasha for them and pulled the girl inside, the girl following like she was on her way to her execution.

Chief Burns watched them go before going over to Chase and closing the door behind him once he was in the driver's seat. "I don't know, Chase, something doesn't seem right here,"

The image of Chase's face on his screen nodded "While I do not see anything wrong with returning a lost child to their caretakers I do concur that something seems amiss,"

The police chief nodded. "Maybe we should wait a moment before we actually leave. Think you can park on the street so they can't see you but so we're closeby?"

"Affirmative, as long as we're not illegally parked," Chase pulled out of the Thamesson's driveway and parked behind some trees.

They waited silently in the same manner they do for their speed trap stakeouts; the Chief was watching for anything unusual while Chase had all of his scanners on high and was tense and still like a jungle cat ready to pounce.

After a few moments Chase's audio sensors picked up the sound of someone screaming and the sound of glass breaking while a shadow could be seen moving quickly across one of the windows and depicted something falling immediately after.

"Sir, I am detecting signs of a domestic disturbance within that dwelling,"

Chief Burns didn't need to be told twice as he got out of the robot in disguise and went up to the house.

Peering into the window, he saw Mr. Thamesson hitting Sasha with a belt while she tried to shield herself with her arms while trying to brush off broken pieces of a lamp that had fallen on her.

As Chief Burns moved to the door he saw Mrs. Thamesson enter the room and go to the girl's side. '_Well, at least I'll have some help getting her away from him.'_

Chief Burns opened the door and ran inside shouting "Police, no one move!"

He looked over to where the little foster family was and saw, to his horror, that Mrs. Thamesson hadn't gone to help the girl but was holding her by the arms while her husband kicked Sasha in the stomach shouting "Hold still, you little…"

They stopped dead in their tracks when Chief Burns shouted and looked at him like they weren't sure if he was really there or if they were imagining him.

Mr. Thamesson quickly hid the belt behind his back and put on a forced smile. "Ah, Chief Burns, to what do we owe the pleasure?"

Chief Burns crossed his arms "Sorry to barge in like this but when I was backing out of your driveway I heard a loud crash and screaming, just wanted to make sure everyone was alright,"

Mrs. Thamesson moved to stand in front of Sasha so she was out of his view. "Oh, Sasha knocked over a lamp and it fell on her. We were trying to clean up the mess and make sure she didn't hurt herself,"

Chief Burns' frown deepened. "By hitting it with a belt?"

The couple both looked flustered. "What… what do you mean?"

Chief Burns stepped forward to take the Thamessons outside. "Next time you want to lie to someone, make sure they can't see what you're actually doing through the window as they drive by,"

He was able to apprehend Mr. Thamesson but Mrs. Thamesson ran from him, stepping on Sasha's arm as she ran and circled the room to get around him, and fled out the front door.

Chief Burns used his comm. link to call Chase "Chase, we got a runner, Caucasian woman with red hair and blue eyes wearing a light blue night gown. Apprehend and detain, I repeat Apprehend and detain,"

He heard the sound of a transformation sequence outside followed by a woman's scream and another transformation sequence and knew Chase had captured Mrs. Thamesson.

Chief Burns smiled down at Mr. Thamesson "Transforming cop car with Voice activated autopilot. The things they come up with these days,"

Chief Burns hand cuffed the man and took his belt for evidence before he brought him out to Chase.

He put Mr. Thamesson in the back seat with his wife and slammed the door as Chase locked them in and rolled down his front window a crack so the two of them could talk.

"Book 'em, Chase. I'll be back as soon as I check on Sasha,"

Chief Burns could hear Chase reading the couple their rights in the robotic monotone he used around strangers as he walked back up the path and into the house where he left the girl.

He knelt down next to Sasha and found she had lost consciousness due to blood loss and a possible concussion if the bruises already forming on her head—among others on her body—were anything to go by.

Chief Burns reactivated his comm. link again, this time calling Dani. "Dani, I need you and Blades to come to the house on Canyon Road as soon as possible. We have a medical emergency,"

Dani's voice came over the comm. link. :What happened?:

"I found out why Sasha didn't want to go back to her foster parents. Bring the trauma kit,"

It was quiet for a moment before Dani said in a soft voice. :Oh God… We'll be right there,"

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_Sometime later in Griffin Rock Hospital I.C.U. _

Chief Burns sat on a bench outside of Sasha's room with his head in his hands, mulling over everything that had happened in the last few hours and what he was going to do next.

He heard a few metallic clinks and a sloshing sound and looked up to see an old blue thermos held out to him.

He recognized it as his and thought one of his children had brought it for him but when he looked up at the person who held it he didn't recognize him.

At least until he spoke. "Kade dropped this off a few moments ago, he told me you could probably use some 'coffee' right about now,"

Chief Burns tried to keep his surprise to a minimum to keep from arousing suspicion and took the thermos from him. "Thanks Chase,"

Chase nodded and sat down next to his human partner, unaware that said human kept glancing at him.

While Chief Burns knew the bots all had holographic forms—or holoforms—that could be made to look like smaller versions of themselves or changed to look human, he had never seen Chase's human one; his was a tall man with dark hair, pale skin and amber colored eyes wearing a white and blue police uniform.

Out of courtesy, he offered his friend some coffee. "Want some?"

Chase shook his head. "No thank you. While I am curious as to why humans desire this beverage so much I have no intention of enduring what Blades experienced when he tried some of Graham's yesterday,"

Chief Burns poured himself some coffee, using the lid as a cup. "So that's why he was more jittery than usual,"

By "Jittery" the chief was referring to the fact that both Chase and Heatwave had to pin the mech down until he calmed down for safety reasons.

Chase nodded and the two of them were quiet as Chase stood up to look in the window leading into Sasha's room and crossed his arms. "What did the doctors say?"

Charlie sighed and took a sip of coffee. "I want to say it looks worse than it is but she has two bruised ribs, another one broken, her arm is also broken where that woman stepped on it and also some internal bruising as well as what's on the surface,"

He took another drink, letting the caffeinated beverage rejuvenate him. "And from the looks of things this has been going on for a long time,"

Chase just stared at the girl, barely able to recognize her with all the tubing, wires and bandages on her, any exposed flesh was bruised and had traces of dried blood on it.

"Why would anyone do something like this? What has that little girl done to deserve it?"

Chief Burns stared straight ahead as he said. "I'm sure she has asked herself that many times,"

Chase stiffened but said nothing so Chief Burns looked at the comm. link clipped onto his shirt collar. "The comm.s have been quiet for a while. Any word on the others?"

Chase nodded. "Graham got Cody home safely and Kade dropped off the coffee for you when he rode with Heatwave when he went to rendezvous with Blades and Dani where they made an emergency landing halfway home,"

Chief Burns looked up at this new bit of information. "Emergency landing? What happened?"

Chase looked at Chief Burns and realized his partner hadn't heard about that until now.

"Blades contacted myself and Heatwave on the comm. frequency that is privy to Rescue Bots only without realizing it and told us that he was making an emergency landing,"

Chief Burns didn't know anything about a "Rescue Bots only" comm. channel but made a mental note to ask about it later and let Chase continue.

"When we tried contacting them we only got a response from Dani saying they landed in an alley where, and I quote, 'Blades just started puking in a dumpster' unquote,"

Chief Burns raked his fingers through his hair, there was just too much happening at once. "I hope everyone is okay,"

Chase nodded. "As do I, sir,"

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Heatwave pulled up to the alleyway where Dani had told them they had landed, letting Kade out so he could transform, and the two walked up to where Dani was standing off to the side watching over Blades.

Dani looked up at the when she heard them approach and waved her hand at Blades, who was gripping the edges of an open dumpster as he leaned against it. "I don't know what happened. One minute we were flying back to the firehouse, next thing I knew he was landing in an alley, telling me to get out and then…"

Blades stiffened and purged his tanks into the dumpster. They all winced in sympathy and disgust and Dani finished her sentence when he was done. "That,"

Heatwave went over to Blades and put a servo on his back struts. "_**Blades, you ok?"**_

Blades shrugged and didn't say anything.

Heatwave frowned and helped Blades stand up. "Come on, let's get you home,"

While his partner half-supported half-carried the Copterbot out of the alley, Kade looked at Dani "Has he been sick for a while?"

Dani looked at him and shook her head. "He was fine at first, although he was pretty upset about seeing that Sasha girl so beat up,"

Kade started to nod but then he realized both of the bots were gone. "Hey, our rides left without us!"

Dani tugged his sleeve as she walked past him. "Come on, you could use the exercise anyway,"

Kade glared at his sister. "Oh yeah?" the two ran as a chase ensued.

* * *

_**A.N.: Oh slag, now what? People that reviewed and/ or added; vectorsigma101, shadowstalker753,**_


	6. Chapter 6

Dents and Bruises

Rated T for good reasons; including language, slash, mentions of slash, child abuse, mentions of abuse, some Angsty!Chase OOC and anything else I might have missed.

Talking:

"English or other Earth language"

"_**Cybertronian"**_

'_Thoughts'_

:Comm. Links:

(Bond talk)

"_Recordings or telephone conversations"_

_**(Bumblebee talking)**_

_Flashback or change of time or place_

Time changes:

Nano-klick=1/2 a klik. Klik= less than a second. Breem (cybertronian minute) = 8 minutes. Cycle=hour. Joor (Cybertronian hour) = 6 hours. Solar cycle=day. Megacycle= 1 week. Orn= 13 days. Groon= 1 month. Deca-orn = 3 months. Stellar cycle= 1 year. Vorn=83 years.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except my OC's or any original ideas I patched in to fill in any blanks left by the show, if you recognize it from somewhere else it's probably not mine.

* * *

Chief Burns and Chase got back home just as Cody came downstairs to leave for school. "Hey, dad. Hey, Chase. How did it go last night?"

Chief Burns looked at the innocent and hopeful look on Cody's face and immediately felt bad; no one had told Cody what had happened to his friend so now he had to.

Chief Burns sighed. "Sasha's in the hospital and her foster parents are in jail. Other than that everything went smoothly,"

Cody's eyes widened. "Hospital… Jail… What happened?"

Chief Burns crossed his arms. "Turns out the Thamessons weren't the caring foster parents I thought they were. They put Sasha in the hospital so we put them in jail. We're still waiting for the rest of the story from the testimonies of all parties involved,"

Cody remembered the look Sasha gave him before she was taken away. '_She was trying to warn me. She was asking for help,' _he hung his head. "Oh no,"

Chief Burns put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry son, we'll get this figured out. Need a lift to school?"

Cody shook his head. "No, I can walk. Thanks anyway,"

After watching Cody leave, Chief Burns yawned into his hand, which Chase noticed. "Perhaps you should get some sleep, sir,"

Chief Burns raked his fingers through his hair. "Yeah, you're probably right," he went over to the lift. "You get some rest too, Chase. We still got to question the Thamesson's at the station later,"

Chase nodded with the same unreadable look he had when they found Sasha in the alley the night before. "Yes, sir,"

Once Chase was in the safety of his quarters he went to the full length mirror that was in there—neither he or Heatwave were vain mechs but they needed to look presentable for work and having a mirror sometimes helped with that—and stood there for a moment, listening to the silence and looking at his reflection.

After a moment of staring at a reflection that might as well have been a stranger's, Chase began removing the armor on his torso, revealing the protoform he was in when he and his teammates first arrived on Earth.

What not many realized is that this wasn't his true protoform; it was a thin artificial cover that masked and mimicked his real protoform in order to hide it. He peeled away the under armor and looked up at the mech staring back at him in the mirror.

A mech covered in scars from a long, long time ago. Chase looked over each of the scars, remembering how each one got there.

Chase carefully ran his digits across one that formed a deep groove in his back. The sound of the door opening made him jump and scramble to put his armor back on.

Heatwave held up his servos. "_**Calm down, Chase, I've already seen them,"**_

Chase put his armor back on anyway and sat on the berth. "_**I know, I just…"**_

Heatwave sighed and sat on the berth next to Chase. "_**Just what? And don't lie to me,"**_

Neither of them ever usually displayed much emotion in public but in private like this they could be more open towards each other.

Chase sighed and started to say something but looked away so Heatwave offered "_**Thinking about your Creators again?"**_

Chase nodded. "_**And yours as well,"**_

Heatwave grit his denta and swore to himself '_If that slagger was still alive I would fix that in a nano-klick' _but kept that to himself. "_**You ok, bro?"**_

Chase snorted and looked at him. "_**You do realize we are not actually brothers, right?"**_

Heatwave smiled and gently touched his left cheek strut to Chase's in a Cybertronian gesture for "family". "_**Might as well be,"**_

"_**Indeed" **_Chase returned the gesture and the two separated but didn't say anything for a moment before Heatwave looked at him.

"_**You're going to have to tell them eventually, Chase. Might as well get it over with,"**_

Chase sighed and squared his shoulders. "_**After this case is closed,"**_

Heatwave sighed as his shoulders drooped. "_**Yeah, you should be the best person to handle this… the same thing happened to you,"**_

Chase looked at Heatwave and got up. "_**Alright, that was low, even for you,"**_

Heatwave got up and started to follow but hesitated when Chase stomped his ped when he reached the door and the mech's body language and E.M. field told him to back off. "_**I know, but that doesn't mean you didn't need to hear it,"**_

Chase went up to the garage where he transformed into vehicle mode and drove out of the firehouse.

Heatwave started to go up to the garage to follow him but Boulder stopped him. "Heatwave, incoming message from Optimus Prime,"

Heatwave considered his options; go after Chase or see what the leader of the Autobots had to say.

'_Eh, Chase will be fine on his own,'_

Heatwave went to the command center where Blades was already waiting and Optimus Prime was visible on the screen. "_**Optimus Prime, sir,"**_

Optimus Prime "_Rescue Bots, is all of your team present?"_

Heatwave shook his helm "_**No, Chase just left. I'll call him back,"**_

"_**Already am," **_Blades had his digit to the side of his helm as his optics dimmed while he was talking to Chase. After he told him what was going on he said "_**Okay, see you when you get here,"**_

He disconnected the link and said. "_**Chase said he just caught a speeder, he'll be back as soon as he's finished with them,"**_

The Rescue bots looked up when Optimus Prime spoke up. "_Nonetheless, I am merely calling to alert you that I am sending my lieutenant to give the four of you an evaluation to see how you are coming along in your mission,"_

The bots whispered amongst themselves.

"_**An evaluation?"**_

"_**Nobot said anything about that,"**_

Heatwave looked up at Optimus and said. "_**We're ready, Optimus. What time will they be here?"**_

"_I was just about to send…"_

They heard a voice they recognized as the Autobot medic, Ratchet's. "_Too late, already left via ground bridge,"_

Optimus looked over his shoulder and sighed as he looked back at the Autobots. "_Correction, due to my lieutenants… eagerness…"_

Boulder saw what the Prime was getting at. "_**They're already here,"**_

Optimus nodded. "_Correct, Boulder,"_

They saw a red-and-white mech, one they recognized as Ratchet, step into view "_The coordinates for the ground bridge were for the same area Bumblebee and Optimus were bridged to when you were accidently sent back in time,"_

Heatwave spoke up. "_**How would we know that? We were decades in the past at the time,"**_

Bumblebee leaned into view and beeped **(_Somewhere in the wooded area behind Doc Greene's lab. )_**

"_**Thanks**_"

Blades waved "_**Hi Bumblebee**_!"

Bumblebee waved back as he walked away. **(_Hi, Blades. Hi guys, bye guys.)**_

Optimus looked at each of the Rescue Bots. "_Rescue bots, I wish you the best of luck. Although I must give you fair warning, my lieutenant is not easy to please,"_

Heatwave clenched his fist determinedly. "_**We'll be ready, Optimus,"**_

Optimus nodded and the screen shut off, leaving the Rescue Bots abuzz with excitement and nerves.

Blades bounced up and down and pulled at his servos. "_**Did you hear that? Optimus Prime's lieutenant is on Griffin Rock right now!"**_

Boulder nodded. "_**I wonder who it's going to be,"**_

Heatwave grinned. "_**Whoever he is he's probably a great war hero to make it to Optimus Prime's lieutenant. I'm going to call Chase, maybe he's seen him,"**_

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_Meanwhile, with Chase_

Chase drove into town and, after a moment of consideration, he activated his holoform and altered it to look like Chief Burns so no one would see him and wonder where his "handler" was.

He wasn't _angry, _per say, but he was rather agitated at the situation and everything it reminded him of.

A few minutes after leaving he got a call from Blades. :Hey, Chase, we got an incoming message from Optimus Prime. Better get back to base.:

:Ten-four, be right there.: Just when he was about to head back Chase a saw a speeding blue motorcycle whizz past him. :Scratch that, in pursuit of a speeding motorist, I will be there shortly.:

Chase cut off the comm. link connection and let the thrill of the chase come over him like a comfort blanket. '_Might as well blow off some steam before I go back.'_

Chase turned on his sirens and he drove right behind the blue motorcycle as it pulled over to the side of the road. He pulled over a few feet behind it and waited a moment to see if they would try to run.

The motorcyclist, a woman if the silhouette was anything to go by, looked over her shoulder at him and then at the road in front of her.

Chase's holoform, which still looked like Chief Burns, got out of his vehicle mode and went over to the bike. "Ma'am, do you have any idea how fast you were…"

The motorcycle took off again and, without thinking about it, Chase transformed and grabbed onto the back fender of the motorcycle to hold it in place, his holoform disappearing as he did so.

To his surprise, the rider also disappeared and the motorcycle turned into a blue femme with pink highlights who used a snap kick that connected with Chase's jaw.

Chase cried out in pain and surprise as he released the femme and held his faceplates. "Battery of an officer of the law is a felony offence,"

The femme snarled and was about to hit him again but then she saw the insignia on his chest plate. "_**You're a Rescue Bot?"**_

Chase rubbed his jaw and nodded. "_**Yes I am," **_He stood straighter with his servos at his sides. "_**I am Rescue Bot Chase, and you are?"**_

The femme looked concerned for a moment before her face became cold and expressionless. "_**Autobot Arcee, as Optimus Prime's lieutenant I was sent here to give your team an evaluation on your mission,"**_

Chase was about to say he knew nothing about this evaluation when he got a call from Heatwave. "_**Would you excuse me for a moment?"**_

Arcee waved her servo in a "Go on" motion and Chase answered his comm. link. :This is Chase, go ahead Heatwave.:

:Chase, Optimus Prime just called and said his lieutenant is here on Griffin Rock. They're going to be giving us an evaluation so keep your optics peeled.:

Chase glanced at Arcee who was looking around like she expected to be attacked at any moment and then returned his attention to the call. :No need, Heatwave. I already found the lieutenant. ETA: five minutes.:

He cut off the call and Arcee looked at him. "_**Everything ok?"**_

Chase nodded "_**Yes, my team merely felt the need to call and let me know you are here,"**_

Arcee rolled her optics. "_**A little late for that,"**_

Chase held out his servo. "_**If you would just follow me I can show you the way to our base,"**_

Arcee transformed into her vehicle mode and her holoform reappeared on her seat. "Actually, I was already on my way there,"

Chase looked around and calculated the supposed route she was currently on. "With all due respect, ma'am, you're going the wrong way. Our base is at the fire house, you are currently driving in the direction of Doc Greene's laboratory,"

Arcee spun around in a sharp turn. "Oh, in that case, lead the way,"

Chase drove back to the firehouse with Arcee following.

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Back at the firehouse, Heatwave took a few shots at his practice dummy while Boulder waited calmly in the garage and Blades had run upstairs in his holoform to tell the humans a new bot would be arriving in a few minutes.

The whole Burns family, minus Cody, was downstairs a few minutes later.

Graham went to stand next to Boulder. "Is it true a new bot is coming to Griffin Rock?"

Boulder nodded "They're already here. Chase found them on the outskirts of town and is bringing them back here,"

Kade looked up at Heatwave accusingly as the Rescue Bot came in. "And when were we going to be told someone was coming to give us an inspection?"

Heatwave crossed his arm-servos. "First off, _you_'re not getting an inspection, we are. Second, we were just told about this a few minutes ago but from the sound of things the lieutenant got here early so we're just going to have to be on our toes,"

Chief Burns heard engines outside and saw Chase pulling into the garage. "Calm down, they're here,"

Chase pulled into the garage and transformed off to the side so that a blue motorcycle could drive in after him.

They all watched the blue motorcycle park with the holoform riding it putting one foot down to keep it up and waited for it to transform. Instead it turned its front wheel towards the humans as though looking at them.

Graham leaned closer to the bots and whispered "What are they doing?"

Blades remembered something Bumblebee told him last time they met. "The Autobots aren't allowed to let regular humans see them in robot mode at all," he looked at the blue motorcycle and spoke reassuringly. "It's ok, they're with us,"

The motorcycle and the rider seemed to consider for a moment before the holoform disappeared and the motorcycle transformed into a small sleek robot.

Arcee put her servos on her hips. "He's right, one of the main rules of Autobot conduct is to keep a low profile. You mechs are lucky to be the exception to this rule,"

Kade pointed up at her. "I thought they were sending a lieutenant. You're a girl,"

Arcee glared at him "And how does being a girl stop me from holding my own in a fight?"

Chase rubbed his jaw. "I can attest to that,"

Arcee looked at him. "Speaking of which, how's your jaw?"

Chase nodded. "Fine, thank you,"

"What happened to your jaw?" Blades went over to Chase to examine him while everyone grew concerned and also asked what happened.

Chase tilted his helm so Blades could examine him. "I was under the impression that Arcee was a speeding motorcyclist. When I pulled her over I altered my holoform to look like Chief Burns so no one would wonder why he wasn't driving and went to question her as he normally would,"

Chief Burns smiled. "Clever, but next time ask first,"

"Sorry sir. Anyway, when she tried to run I transformed and grabbed onto her fender to restrain her, prompting her transform and kick me in the face plates"

Blades noticed something was off about Chase's jaw line and tilted Chase's helm at an angle to get a better look. "Primus, she bent it," he pulled Chase to the lift down into the bunker. "Excuse us,"

Graham went over to the monitors. "We'll patch this in with the monitors in the command center so you guys don't miss anything,"

"Thanks Graham,"

Once they were gone, Arcee looked down at Kade. "Now then, since you asked so nicely…"

Her sarcastic tone changed to a more professional one, only slightly, as she looked at the whole group. "I am second lieutenant of the Autobots stationed on Earth. Was First but then Commander Ultra Magnus recently arrived and he was awarded that post. However, being as he had more pressing matters and couldn't make it, I came in his place,"

Arcee stood at attention and looked at the bots. "That said, Optimus and Bumblebee told me about you four but I just want to make sure I knew who was who, so if you would all introduce yourselves?"

Heatwave spoke first. "I'm Heatwave, this is Boulder and the two that went downstairs were Blades and Chase, although you seem to be well acquainted with him. And your designation would be…"

Arcee stood more at ease but was still somewhat stiff as she rubbed her optics. "Right, where are my manners. I'm Arcee,"

They heard Blades' voice at the monitor. "_Wait,_ that's_ Arcee_?"

Then they saw Chase wave Blade off. "_Blades' please calm down, that tool you are currently holding in your servo nearly entered my optic_,"

Blades looked at Chase. "_Sorry, Chase… but seriously, if the rumors about her are true you got off lucky," _

Everyone looked at the monitor, then at Arcee, and Boulder asked "_Are _those rumors true?"

Arcee shrugged. "Depends… which rumors have you heard?"

Heatwave looked over his shoulder at the monitor and raised his voice. "Blades, what rumors are you talking about?"

Just like that Blades started rattling off facts he had heard about the Autobot just like he had with Bumblebee. "_I heard she started out as a scout then she went rogue after most of her unit was killed back on Cybertron until she came to Earth to join Optimus Prime's team. I also heard she is one heck of a fighter, from the sounds of things I'd say she is almost more like an assassin than a scout,"_

He realized he said the last part out loud while Arcee was within audio reception range and immediately got flustered. "_Uh, n-no offense, ma'am,"_

Arcee shrugged and said "None taken, although the part about my _whole unit _going offline is new to me…"

Heatwave tried to save his team mate from further embarrassment, and himself from his impatience, by asking. "So, how is this going to work? Are you going to ask us some questions or something?"

Arcee shook her helm. "Nope, I'm just going to watch and observe as you go about your day to day activities,"

Dani spoke up. "How are you going to do that if you're not allowed to let anyone see you?"

Arcee shrugged. "Basically you guys are going to be stalked by a chick on a blue motorcycle for the day. I was going to make this a surprise inspection so I can see what you really do but since Optimus decided to warn you that changes things,"

Kade raised an eyebrow. "Why? What changes?"

Graham held up his hands. "Basically it's like taking a test and she's the teacher. When students taking a test know the teacher is watching they're either on their best behavior and focus on the test or they nervously glance at the teacher to see if they're staring. If a student doesn't think they teacher is watching they are more laid back and take the test at their own pace,"

Arcee nodded. "Exactly, they know I'm watching so now they are going to focus more on getting good 'test scores' and less on their jobs,"

They heard a metallic screech and a sound that was similar to a cat's yowl that was edited through a vocoder coming from the monitors and looked at said monitors to see Blades looking at something off screen, presumably Chase since the other Rescue bot was absent from the shot.

"_Whoops sorry, Chase,"_

Chase came back into view as he stood up from the floor, rubbing the side of his helm and his jaw. "_Well, at least my jaw is back in place. Although perhaps you might want to scale back the hydraulic press on that devise next time. I felt like I was hit in the face plates by a pile driver,"_

Blades slouched forward and his helm fins drooped. "_Sorry, last time this thing was used it was to get that dent out of Heatwave's door,"_

Graham went over to the monitor. "You guys coming back up?"

"_Yeah,"_

"_On our way,"_

"Okay, I'll just shut off the monitors then," Graham did just that and a few minutes later Chase and Blades were back in the garage with the others.

Dani looked up at her partner and noticed his helm fins were drooping rather than standing straight up on the sides of his helm. "Hold up… Blades, did your ears just move?"

The Copterbot's helm fins perked up slightly and then slowly moved back into place. "Yeah, sorry, thought I outgrew that habit,"

Dani smiled "Why are you sorry? That actually looks kind of… cute,"

Blades blushed and Arcee spoke up. "I hate to spoil the mood but we only have today to do this evaluation so how about we get started?"

Chief Burns nodded. "How about Chase and I go first? We have patrol so we can multitask and also show you around while we're at it,"

Arcee considered and nodded as she waved towards to door. "Lead the way,"

Chase transformed and opened his door for Chief Burns to get in his alt. mode. "Ladies first,"

Arcee ran a few steps and transformed as she went, wheels already spinning as she landed on them and drove out of the garage.

Once they were gone, everyone let out a groan and then Blades started pacing. "Oh scrap, we're dead. We are SO dead"

Dani looked up at Blades "Blades, what are you talking about?"

Blades held up his servos and said. "_Arcee _is the one giving us the evaluation! Bumblebee told me about her when he was here last and Optimus Prime himself said she is hard to please. Bumblebee also mentioned how they recently got a new recruit and Arcee is the only one that hasn't accepted him yet. That was weeks ago and they still can't stand each other, we only have one day to get her to like us. One day!"

Graham looked up at the bots "What happens if you don't pass the evaluation?"

Boulder sighed and leaned against the wall. "It's like the Morbot incident all over again,"

Dani put her fists on her hips. "Well, we can't let that happen, now can we?" she looked at Heatwave and Kade. "You two think you can at least pretend to get along so she doesn't take points off for your little spats?"

Heatwave and Kade looked at each other and said at the same time "I will if he does,"

Everyone groaned as the two partners' hackles raised and an argument ensued. "We're in trouble…"

Dani nodded in agreement with Boulder's calm statement. "Maybe if we let them get it out of their systems now they can at least act civil when Arcee's evaluating them,"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

After school, Cody and Frankie stopped by the hospital to see Sasha.

Frankie adjusted her backpack as they walked up to the building. "Remind me again why we're bringing Sasha her homework now instead of waiting until she's out of the hospital. I mean she's… in the hospital,"

Cody looked at Frankie. "Because this way she can have something to do while she's here and not fall behind in school,"

While Frankie went to the gift shop to get a get well present for Sasha, Cody went up to the nurse's station and asked the woman there "Excuse me, would you happen to know which room Sasha Morgan is in?"

The nurse looked up from the file she was looking at and said. "One moment please," She turned to look something up on her computer and said. "It says here she's in intensive care unit, room 104,"

"Thank you," Cody turned to see Frankie behind him holding a small vase full of flowers and the two went down the hall and followed the signs to room 104.

As they walked Frankie tightened her grip on the vase she was holding. "You never said she was in intensive care,"

Cody looked at Frankie then down at the floor. "Dad and Chase just said she was in the hospital, I didn't know she was hurt that badly,"

When they turned down another hallway, they passed a waiting room where a young man who was looking at the fish tank kept there. The guy recognized the two when he saw their reflections in the glass and turned around. "Cody, Frankie, what are you two doing here?"

The two kids looked at the young man and after a few moments were able to recognize him as Blades' holoform.

Cody smiled "Hey Blades, we're here to see Sasha. What are you doing here?"

Blades shrugged. "The same but there's a doctor in with her now so they wouldn't let me in," he crossed his arms with a pout.

Frankie just gawked at the holoform, marveling at how… real it looked. "Whoa, like what you did with your holoform, Blades,"

Blades smiled sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head, making his spiky hair move about on his head. "Uh… thanks,"

The three of them stopped at the nurse's station in that section of the hospital to ask if they could see Sasha and the woman asked "Are you friends or family?"

Cody answered honestly. "We're her friends,"

The nurse picked up a phone to make a call and told them. "Sorry, she's not supposed to have visitors right now, but she will be able to in a few minutes. If you would just have a seat in the waiting room we'll let you know when she's ready for visitors, alright?"

The three of them thanked her and went to the waiting room. Cody and Frankie both sat down in the vinyl chairs in the room while Blades went back to looking at the fish tank until a sudden wave of vertigo hit him and he leaned against the arm rest of a chair behind him and held his head.

Cody noticed and asked "Blades, are you ok?"

Blades peered between his fingers at Cody and nodded as he rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, fine. Just felt really dizzy all of the sudden,"

Frankie looked up from straightening her flowers "Maybe you should sit down,"

"Maybe you're right," Blades started to sit in the chair he was leaning against but then he touched his mouth and went to sit in another chair, one that was next to the bathroom, with his head in his hands.

Cody and Frankie exchanged concerned looks and went to sit next to Blades. "Are you _sure _you're ok?"

Blades shook his head. "I don't know. Wasn't feeling good last night but I thought I was over it. Just in case I'm not…" he pointed towards the bathroom to indicate he wanted to be close to it in case he got sick again.

Cody remembered Dani mentioning Blades had thrown up in a dumpster the night before when he got up that morning. "Are you getting sick?"

Blades shrugged and Frankie gently scolded him. "Blades, if you're sick you should stay home,"

Blades shook his head. "No, I want to check on Sasha… and Arcee is still here,"

Cody wondered why having the femme around would make Blades not want to be at the firehouse and Frankie didn't know who Arcee was at all.

"Arcee?"

"Who's Arcee?"

Blades sighed and explained. "Arcee is Optimus Prime's lieutenant, she's here on Griffin Rock to give us an evaluation on whether or not we are completing our mission, which is to serve and protect Griffin Rock as Rescue Bots and learn about humans while we're at it,"

Frankie smiled at him. "But you guys have been doing that,"

Blades rolled his eyes and nodded "Yeah, but Optimus Prime wasn't kidding when he said she is not easy to please and since Heatwave won't stop pestering her on what it's like to be an Autobot soldier and him and Kade still fight like they always do we're on thin ice with her as it is,"

He clenched his hands in frustration and let them fall helplessly into his lap. "We already have one bot out with Boulder still recovering from the warehouse fire so if one of us gets sick, namely me, then half our team is out of commission,"

He looked at them like he was pleading with them to understand. "If Arcee thinks we can't complete our mission, she'll tell Optimus and he might…"

Blades let his sentence hang and Cody's eyes widened. "He's not going to send you guys away, is he?"

Blades hung his head and looked down at his hands. "I don't know, that's what scares me,"

Frankie clenched her fists. "No, they can't do that! We can't let them,"

Blades nodded. "Which is why Boulder, Chase and the other humans are taking turns trying to keep Heatwave and Kade from fighting, Chase and Boulder are being on their best behaviors and I'm avoiding her as much as I have to so she doesn't know I'm under the weather,"

Cody looked at him. "Doesn't she need to evaluate you too?"

Blades nodded "Yeah, but I told her I was visiting a friend in the hospital today. Luckily she can't follow me in here when I'm visiting Sasha because she's actually supposed to stay out of sight,"

They waited a few more minutes until Chief Burns and Chase's holoform arrived to question Sasha. Chief Burns noticed the three of them sitting in the waiting room and waved them over. "Why don't you come with us? She might be more comfortable with telling us what happened if a few familiar friendly faces are there,"

While the five of them walked down the hall to the room that their most recent rescue was in, Cody remembered how the girl had looked at him the night before. "I think she tried telling me last night, but I couldn't figure out what she was trying to say,"

Chief Burns put a hand on his son's shoulder. "Cody, you didn't know what was going on,"

Chase stared directly ahead as he said quietly. "Besides, you're not the one that brought her back there,"

They got to the room as a doctor and a nurse came out of the room, and Chief Burns gently pushed Cody towards the door. "Why don't you three go see Sasha? I'll be in as soon as I ask the doctor a few questions,"

Cody nodded and slowly opened the door so it didn't make any noise and looked inside to see the lights were down and the room was mostly lit by the sunlight coming in from the window in the room.

Blades held the door open while the two children fully entered the room and slowly closed it behind him so it wouldn't make any noise, before it did close he heard Chief Burns ask the doctor what they had been able to find and the doctor listed off the injuries they were able to diagnose and how long it would take them to heal.

Blades snorted derisively as the door clicked closed and muffled the sounds beyond it. '_It took them all night to figure out what I was able to figure out in one of the scans I ran when Dani and I brought her to them last night.'_

He turned around and saw Cody standing at the foot of the hospital bed while Frankie went to put the flowers they had brought on the window sill.

Sasha was on the bed, lying there with her head lolled to the side as though she fell asleep looking out the window, with a cast on one arm and an I.V. in another.

Blades felt sick when he saw how beat up the girl was and felt as though he had failed as a Rescue Bot. "Maybe we should come back when she wakes uh…" he started to say "up" but then he realized it wasn't just the situation making him feel sick, he actually felt sick.

Blades covered his mouth and wheezed. Cody turned to look at him. "You okay?"

"Bathroom's through the door behind you if you need it,"

They looked and saw Sasha peeking at them through one eye as she slowly turned over and opened both eyes to look at them. "How's it going?"

"Good" she looked at Cody. "That's good,"

"Fine," She looked at Frankie. "That's fine,"

"Shouldn't we be asking you that?" she crossed her arms and gave Blades a look with her eye brow raised. "Shouldn't you be sitting down?"

Blades looked at her questioningly, then at the chair in the corner and then back again. "Uh…"

Sasha gave him a no-nonsense look. "Seriously, you're pale as a ghost and you looked like you were going to be sick a moment ago, you really should sit down or something,"

Cody watched her stare down Blades until he did as she asked and saw what she was doing. '_She really is concerned about him but she's also trying to avoid talking about last night. Figures,'_

He turned around to see the door open and saw his dad entering the room with Chase's holoform behind him.

Sasha looked up to see Chief Burns and Chase's holoform at the door and turned away so that she was looking at them out the corner of her eyes. "Sorry about before,"

Chief Burns came into the room and stood next to her bed while Chase stationed himself at the door. "It's alright, Sasha, although next time you might want to tell us why you were running instead of just taking off like that. We would have listened,"

Sash shrugged. "Yeah, well, I didn't exactly know that at the time and my past experiences with cops weren't exactly good ones,"

Chase looked over his shoulder at her and Chief Burns asked. "Just how many 'past experiences with cops' have you had?"

Sasha counted on her fingers "Let's see, there was the time one came to my house to tell my mom that my dad was dead, then there was one that took me away from my home after mom had her accident and took me to the court house where I was found by the Thamesson's who punished me for even being seen with you or your cop car robot thing because they thought I might have snitched on them,"

Chase looked back out at the hallway as though he were guarding the room, pleased to know that the girl hadn't already acquired a criminal record at such a young age.

Chief Burns realized that she wasn't afraid of him or the bots, she was afraid of what the Thamessons might do if they found out she told the authorities about them. He took out the photo the Thamessons had given him. "Recognize this picture?"

Sasha took it from him and looked it over as a sad smile "Yeah, where did you get it?"

Chief Burns told her. "The Thamessons said they took it they day they got you,"

Sasha frowned. "As in they took it _from my bag_ the day they got me,"

She turned the picture around to show them. "See that fencing and the sign in the background? This picture was taken by my mom at Keeneland Park race track right before her last race. I've got another one like it only she's in it too and my aunt took that one,"

Chief Burns frowned, now he had to get into the more personal questions he didn't want to ask… mostly because he had a feeling knew the answers. "And where has your mother been during all of this?"

Sasha narrowed her eyes, Chief Burns didn't say what he said with accusation or any ill will towards her mother but it was a touchy subject. "Like I said, that was her last race,"

She looked up at him with a smile but with tears in her eyes. "Did you know every year an average of two jockeys die on the horse racing tracks in the U.S.? What are the odds of one of those two being my mom?"

Chief Burns frowned sadly while everyone else gasped and Chase remained professionally stoic. "And your father? You mentioned a police officer came to your house and told your mother he was dead. How did he…"

Sasha shrugged. "He was in the military, died in 2008,"

"And no one else in your family tried to come in contact with you?"

Sasha snorted and rubbed her side when the action agitated her ribs. "_Family? _As far as I'm concerned the only family I had left were my parents and my aunt, she came to the court house to get me but the Thamesson's came and got me instead so I assumed she lost. My _relatives_ I haven't seen since mom's funeral,"

Cody tilted his head to the side. "Aren't relatives and family the same thing?"

Sasha shook her head, tossing her ponytail about as she did. "_Hell _no, there's a difference alright,"

"Language," They all looked at Chase; that was the first thing he had said in a while.

The girl hung her head. "Sorry,"

Chief Burns tried to get the questioning back on track. "Do you think you could tell us about what happened with you and the Thamesson's?"

Sasha sighed and closed her eyes. "Don't see why you're asking me. They're grown-ups and I'm just a kid so no one is going to believe a word I say. What have they told you already anyway?"

Chief Burns could tell she had a feeling anything her foster parents had told them was mostly lies she would have to correct and he didn't doubt that was true.

"Aside from what they thought would help us find you when they reported you missing and gave us that picture, they've just been demanding to be released and insisting that they didn't do anything wrong and that we can't prove that they did,"

Sasha nodded and looked him square in the eye. "What did you want to know?"

Chief Burns sat down on the bed and looked at her. "How about you start from the beginning,"

Sasha closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she recounted her story. "I used to live on a horse farm near Lexington, Kentucky, where we raised and trained racehorses and rescued the ones that would have been sent to slaughter when they retired. Mom was a jockey and dad helped with the training until he got deployed and never came back. Then mom got into an accident during one of her races; everything was going great until the horse in front of her caused her horse to trip so badly in flipped over and launched her through the air, both of their necks broke when they landed and the other horses behind them trampled her,"

Chief Burns noticed the way she said it as though she had personally witnessed the event. "You saw this happen?"

Sasha nodded. "I was in the stands with my aunt in the owner and trainer's box,"

Cody and Frankie said nothing, they had both lost their mothers when they were younger but Sasha actually saw her mom die recently. Blades' spark went out to Sasha's mom and her family as a former racer himself.

Sasha continued her story. "After we got back from her funeral…"

Chief Burns interrupted again. "Who's 'we'?"

"Me and my aunt Joanie, the rest of the relatives and funeral-goers went home by then. When I went upstairs to change my clothes someone rang the doorbell and my aunt answered it before calling me downstairs. When I went downstairs a police officer was there, he told me to pack my things and come with him,"

She crossed her arms and dug her fingers into them. "I didn't know what was going on or what was going to happen but aunt Joanie said everything was going to be okay so I did what the police officer asked and Joanie drove separately as we went to the courthouse,"

She almost cried when she whispered. "I didn't even get to say goodbye to everyone,"

She blinked hard and looked up at Chief Burns with the same determination he often saw on Cody's face, when the boy decided he wasn't going to let anything stop him.

"They had me wait in a separate room by myself while they sorted out who was going to get 'custody' of me…" she made air quotes when she said "custody".

"…so I waited for… what, a few hours? Until the Thamessons came in and told me I was supposed to go with them; that I was theirs now. They each grabbed one of my suitcases and I grabbed my back pack and violin and they dragged me outside to their car. I tried to go back inside to say goodbye to my aunt but they said she already left and that I wasn't supposed to see or talk to her or anyone else in my family anymore,"

"Once we left the courthouse we drove all the way to Maine, only stopping for occasional rest stops, got on the ferry and came here. They enrolled me in school, mostly to get me out of their hair during the day, where I met Cody and Frankie and when I got the chance I stopped at the park to practice my violin, which is where I met Blake,"

She looked at Chief Burns. "I think you can figure out the rest on your own, after last night,"

Chief Burns went over the information in his head. "One thing I don't quite understand is that when the Thamesson's reported you missing they said the last time they saw you was when they came home the night before, Mr. Thamesson got off work and Mrs. Thamesson got back from a trip to the store,"

"I call bullshit," Sasha ignored Chase's attempt to admonish her cursing. "They both came back drunk as skunks and Mr. Thamesson was somehow able to remember getting a call from the school saying I had supposedly gotten into a fight with some other students at school, which was a lie; they were going to give Cody a swirly and I pushed one of the kids over and got him away from them,"

Chief Burns looked at Cody who nodded. "It's true,"

They let Sasha continue. "I ran upstairs to my room but he somehow got there first and slammed the door on my hand,"

Cody's eyes widened. "So that's how you got that bruise on your hand,"

Sasha nodded. "He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me back down stairs where they both took turns hitting me and screaming things like 'Now I see why your parents gave you up, you brat. You're nothing but trouble,' I told them my parents didn't give me up, they died, but I just got in even more trouble for interrupting,"

Blades gripped his knees tightly. "That's horrible. How did you get away?"

"Sat there and took it until they passed out, then ran upstairs to lock myself in my room until early the next morning when I got ready for school and snuck out like I've done every morning," She looked at Chief Burns. "Anything else?"

Chief Burns thought for a moment and shook his head. "For now, no, but I might have more questions after I talk to them again later today,"

Sasha looked at him, looking lost. "So… what happens now?"

Chief Burns explained to her. "We still have some more questions for the Thamessons, and there is always the possibility that this case might have to go to court, depending on what you and your family decides, we're just going to have to wait and see,"

Sasha's hazel eyes narrowed as she dug her fingers into the blanket covering her. "And just what am I supposed to do while we 'wait and see'? I don't have any way of getting a hold of my relatives let alone getting back home to Kentucky and the only place I have to go here after they let me out of this medical prison is _that house,"_

Blades saw she was trying to appear angry with the situation to hide the fact that she was about to cry and, without thinking about it, he went to sit next to her on the bed and pulled her into a hug. "Shh, it's alright. Everything's going to be ok,"

Sasha stiffened and said "Ouch" without any emotion whatsoever and Blades quickly released her.

"Oops, sorry," Blades went back to the chair he had been sitting in and sat back down. The girl started coughing and Blades panicked. '_Oh Primus, I broke her!' "_Are you okay?"

To his relief Sasha took a deep breath and smiled at him. "Yeah, the doctors just told me to either take a deep breath or cough once in a while until my ribs heal. Hurts like he…"

She glanced at Chase and quickly corrected herself "…heck, but it's either that or they'll heal around my lungs like a corset," She held her hands close to her sides and moved them closer together to simulate her ribcage collapsing in on itself.

A nurse came in with a cart that carried meal trays. "Chow time, Sasha,"

Chief Burns gestured with his hand and everyone that had been sitting down stood up. "How about we let her eat her dinner and come back some other time,"

Everyone said their goodbyes and Cody set his friend's homework on the table next to the bed and they all left.

On their way outside, Blades felt sick again and swayed on his feet as he covered his mouth and dry heaved.

Chase grasped his shoulder to steady him. "Blades, are you unwell?"

Blades waited for the sickness to pass and straightened up and shook his head to clear it.

However, Chase took this as his denying that something was wrong. "Perhaps you should run a quick diagnostic on yourself when we get back,"

Blades nodded and started to follow the rest of the group as they walked down the sidewalk. "Yeah as soon as I…" he stopped walking and face palmed when a sudden realization dawned on him. "_**Scrap,"**_

Everyone looked at Blades when he suddenly stopped. "What's wrong?"

Blades' holoform jammed his hands into his pockets. "I forgot I landed up on the roof when I got here," he turned on his heel and waved as he walked away. "I'll see you guys later,"

"Alright,"  
"See you later, Blades,"

Blades went back into the hospital to take either the elevator or the stairs up to the roof and the rest of the group went to Chase's holoform.

While the humans were getting into their seats, Chase noticed a blue motorcycle parked on the far side of the parking lot and the female driver riding this particular motorcycle was looking up at the roof.

Chase turned off his holoform as soon as he closed his doors to make it look like he had gotten in on the front passenger side. "Sir, should I tell Blades it is now his turn to be evaluated or should I allow the lieutenant to view him under the usual circumstances?"

Chief Burns looked around to see if he could spot Arcee and then settled on looking up at the roof where they could just see the tops of Blades' rotors when he couldn't. "Probably not, he'd probably end up like he was when Bumblebee was here and somehow I don't think that will look good on her report,"

"Understood sir,"

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_**A.N.: Quick shout out to the people that reviewed and or added; nightfury97, becky199756, nindroidlover14, The Writer Akayla, meerkat4 and one unnamed Guest review.**_


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